Consumer Reports said on Wednesday it had found "concerning" levels of lead and cadmium in a third of various chocolate products it tested recently, and called on Hershey to reduce the amounts of heavy metals in its chocolate.
The article mentions that the cadmium can largely be mitigated by preventing the beans from touching dirt in the drying process and shielding them from heavy metal dust. The lead though is probably introduced at the factory, and that’s obviously a problem but not immediately clear where it’s being introduced.
It also mentions that the only likely reason milk chocolate doesn’t have these unsafe levels is because the dairy content reduces the amount of pure chocolate requires for the mix. So both milk and dark chocolate are bad, it’s just milk chocolate has cocoa in it and thus less heavy metal.
mrchampion corrected another comment of mine in this thread that links studies saying the lead might change from leaded gasoline used during the shipping process.
This publishing (PDF) does seem to indicate the is done degree of bioaccumulation of cadmium in the cacao plants though.
The article mentions that the cadmium can largely be mitigated by preventing the beans from touching dirt in the drying process and shielding them from heavy metal dust. The lead though is probably introduced at the factory, and that’s obviously a problem but not immediately clear where it’s being introduced.
It also mentions that the only likely reason milk chocolate doesn’t have these unsafe levels is because the dairy content reduces the amount of pure chocolate requires for the mix. So both milk and dark chocolate are bad, it’s just milk chocolate has cocoa in it and thus less heavy metal.
mrchampion corrected another comment of mine in this thread that links studies saying the lead might change from leaded gasoline used during the shipping process.
This publishing (PDF) does seem to indicate the is done degree of bioaccumulation of cadmium in the cacao plants though.