Despite spooky Consumer Reports' testing, metals in chocolates aren't scary | Hacker News Reader

Despite spooky Consumer Reports' testing, metals in chocolates aren't scary

arstechnica.com

60 pointsbell-cot92 comments

This doesn't mention accumulation at all. My understanding is that these accumulate in your body and are fairly difficult to get rid of. From that perspective Ars' arguments about allowed daily intake levels don't make much sense. If they accumulate, you'll get 1000x the amount by eating a piece every day for 3 years.

On the other hand, eating a piece every day for 3 years will likely bring other health effects (primarily, obesity and diabetes) that will ruin that person's life before the metals get them, not that they should ignore the metals, mind.

Dark chocolate is low in sugar and carbs, what you appear to be concerned with.

From the linked article:

> CR tested 48 chocolate products in various categories—from milk chocolate bars to brownie mixes, chocolate chips, and hot chocolate

> One piece of chocolate a day will ruin someone's life

what?

Please, if you're going to quote someone, use the actual words they used.

Eating a piece of chocolate a day will make you obese? Lol

As straw men go, it's badly cut. Firstly, do you think the people eating chocolate every day are less or more likely to be obese than those who do not eat chocolate every day?

Secondly, why would that alone make one obese? It's the correlation between a single data point and an outcome that suggests other behaviours which would contribute are also present (hence the first question).

Depends on the chocolate. Darker chocolates in small amounts per day can positively affect health.

Do you always follow up a straw man with cherry picking and hope it to be persuasive?

The vast amount of chocolate bought and consumed in every major economy is not dark, nor, if the figures are to be believed, are they being eaten in small amounts. Cadbury, Hershey et al are doing fine.

What is your point? Whether one eats a lot or a little chocolate, it should still be safe to eat.

I covered the calories part of safe here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38125905

Eating a piece of chocolate every day is not going to give someone obesity and diabetes.

adding one piece a day per person to the national diet would probably have a dramatic effect, especially since that increase will be a bell curve too, with half consuming more.

Depends how you word these Q&As. Each individual has varying susceptibility to diabetes and heavy metal poisoning. You can't apply population statistics to individuals, except that population effects will find certain individuals, and except to say "more is worse, less is better" if it's something harmful.

You moved the goalposts from a piece a day to a bell curve of volume-- and added metal poisioning. No, a piece of chocolate a day would alone cause neither obesity nor diabetes.

it is false to say in the context of general advice for people without regard to where they stand diet and healthwise that a piece of candy a day won't cause them diabetes.

If all people took that non-fact to heart and started eating a piece of candy a day that they weren't eating before, without changing the rest of their diet, then we would have more people with diabetes and other health conditions, all without moving any goalposts.

No we wouldn't. If these hypothetical people are that close to the edge where 10 grams of sugar and 70 calories would do this, they'd develop the diseases anyway. So the number would be the same.

If someone is eating exactly enough calories to covere TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) and is thus at maintenance, given that 70 calories given in the most efficient form (carbohydrate) would mean little energy lost to processing, and 1 gram of fat is 9 calories, that's 7.7 grams of fat added every day. In 3 months, that's ~700 grams of fat added. 1 year, ~2.8 kilos. In 5 years, over 14 kilos.

That rough calculation won't be highly accurate for a number of reasons, but you could halve it and it still is very bad, thus it goes to show how easily fat can accumulate once maintenance calories are breached. Take care of the pennies and the pounds add up. Same goes for calories.

This is also true for apples, but if you said "eating an apple every day for 3 years will likely bring other health effects (primarily, obesity and diabetes) that will ruin that person's life before the lack of access to medical care gets them" you would probably be mocked. You're not going to get fat from one piece of chocolate a day unless you're already on the edge, and if you're on the edge then it doesn't matter very much that chocolate is what took you over it.

Tell me, what is the correlation between chocolate consumption, frequency, and obesity?

Luckily, we have some ideas. From a paper titled Habitual Chocolate Consumption May Increase Body Weight in a Dose-Response Manner:

> More frequent chocolate consumption was associated with a significantly greater prospective weight gain over time, in a dose-response manner.

Do we know if "significantly greater prospective weight gain over time" can lead to obesity and diabetes? Well, yes, obesity is the result of significantly greater prospective weight gain over time. As to diabetes, from Why does obesity cause diabetes?:

> the risk of type 2 diabetes increases linearly with an increase in body mass index

[0] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34986330/#article-details

> Compared to participants who ate chocolate less frequently at visit 1, those who consumed it more frequently were more likely to be younger, thinner, white, female, and smokers, to consume less alcohol, and to have diets rich in calories and fat, and low in vegetables and fruit (Table 1).

They 'adjusted' to try and compensate for this, but I don't think anyone would be suprised that respondents that had diets rich in calories and fat gained weight. There appear to be a lot of adjustments in the linked study. Besides this, the 'study' was just a survey (only from two out of four surveys due to missing data) and appears to not adequately take into account the serving size, exercise, or other dietary intake. Finally, it references three others with the opposite findings and hedges its conclusions with 'may cause'. I'm not convinced.

> Finally, it references three others with the opposite findings and hedges its conclusions with 'may cause'. I'm not convinced.

Not quite. The Finnish study was about chocolate versus other sweets. The "Candy consumption…" in US adults was also chocolate versus sweets. The Association Between More Frequent Chocolate Consumption and Lower Body Mass Index was indeed as the authors concluded - intriguing.

However, Habitual Chocolate Consumption May Increase Body Weight in a Dose-Response Manner was, again as the authors say, more rigorous, and also had larger numbers of participants (one of those three studies had 19 participants, the intriguing one thousands but still less). It also was designed to check the smaller studies.

I would also find it hard to dismiss the larger study because it uses a survey as the smaller studies used surveys too, and the intriguing study used a very similar questionnaire (if not the same, I'm not going to check any further).

> Besides this, the 'study' was just a survey (only from two out of four surveys due to missing data) and appears to not adequately take into account the serving size, exercise, or other dietary intake.

I've no idea why you've put quotes around "study", because it is a study.

Regardless, references to stuff like fruit and vegetable consumption are all over the paper, and there's this from the heading Assessment of Dietary and Chocolate Intake:

“Participants reported the frequency of consumption of specific foods and beverages in nine predefined categories, ranging from never or <1 per month to ≥6 times per day. Standard portion sizes were given as a reference for intake estimation.”

We’re talking like 40 calories.

Ignoring the fact that I wasn't thinking of the total extra calories of anyone eating a piece of chocolate (a piece being undefined in size anyway) to end at that piece of chocolate…

The UK's top selling chocolate is Cadbury's Dairy Milk. It's 45 grams in total, and each of the 60 pieces is indeed 40 calories. Most people I know eat the whole thing, and those people are overweight, like the majority of the UK public, an obesity rate that is matched in many countries world wide. As of a couple of years ago, diabetes diagnoses have doubled in the last 15 years

> that over 4.9 million people are currently living with diabetes in the UK, with 90 per cent of those with type 2

type 2 diabetes being the one that correlates, if not is caused by, obesity. Additionally:

> 13.6m people are now at increased risk of type 2 diabetes in the UK

Again, this is a world wide problem[1]. Just the other day I was listening to the Huberman Lab podcast about eye health and the expert pointed out that the upsurge in diabetes in the US and elsewhere was threatening eye health[2].

So, you may say it's only 40 calories but the data shows that people are getting fatter, because those eating a piece per day aren't only eating a piece per day, whether that's chocolate or other things. If it were just the extra 40 calories there wouldn't be a problem.

[0] https://www.diabetes.org.uk/about_us/news/diabetes-diagnoses...

[1] https://www.worldobesity.org/resources/resource-library/covi...

[2] https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/dr-jeffrey-goldberg-how-...

Obesity and Diabetes aren't given just because you take sugar, it is the surplus that matters.

That may be why I used the word likely in the statement, to avoid black and white conclusions.

There is an inverse relationship between the level of metals and the total calories. Very dark chocolate would have much more heavy metals, whereas milk chocolate would be worse from a caloric perspective.

So someone who eats a bit of 80% chocolate each day would not be consuming that many calories, compared to the amount of heavy metals. Someone who ate milk chocolate would get very little in the way of calories, but quite a bit more calories.

Dark chocolate isn’t especially bad for you. Not that much sugar in it, really, if you stick to 80%+. The nutritional profile is a lot like peanut butter.. calories and fat yes, but gobs if protein.

Yes, though it seems that 80%+ is perhaps not so great from a heavy metals perspective...

My idea of a "piece" and yours may differ dramatically. Nevertheless I don't think one "piece" a day will bring on diabetes or obesity.

Firstly, depending on the product and amount, you're looking at under 100 calories. Since daily requirements are something over 2000 calories per day the rest of your diet matters more.

Diabetes is a complex disease caused by excessive insulin production. Sugar is a part of the causal chain, but not a direct cause. See https://www.uhhospitals.org/blog/articles/2023/03/can-eating....

Yes, the levels of metals are important. I presume their presence is caused by metal components in their manufacture. Which begs the question if there are other products in play here not just chocolate.

Why are you saying that I'm suggesting one piece of chocolate a day will bring on diabetes or obesity? You may as well say that I'm suggesting they only eat one piece of chocolate a day and will die of starvation as it would be just as justifiable a reading.

No, eating chocolate every day (and in my mind I thought of the kind of chocolate confectionary one would buy in a corner shop) would suggest an unhealthy lifestyle in general and an inability to eat healthily, again, in general.

> Sugar is a part of the causal chain, but not a direct cause.

Again, why are you reading things that I did not state? I wrote "obesity and diabetes". Obesity is definitely a major risk factor, if not a direct cause of type 2 diabetes. The risk of it increases linearly with BMI.

To think I suggested that eating one bar of chocolate alone would cause diabetes is absurd.

Your follow up is perhaps more nuanced than your original post, and does a better job of explaining your thinking here.

I simply took your original post as it was stated;

>> On the other hand, eating a piece every day for 3 years will likely bring other health effects (primarily, obesity and diabetes)

I appreciate you glorifying your original intent.

That's fair enough, several people interpreted what was written in a way I did not intend.

glorifying? I don't know if that's autocorrect or a dig but it did make me smile! Anyway, no bother either way.

*What is this article?*

This is a chocolate company PR plant article, which have been hitting the presses hard with this message. It is disaster management / emergency PR.

They don’t want to discuss bioaccumulation of heavy metals because it would be very bad for business.

It’s not new. And it’s especially bad for children so you can imagine what the chocolate industry worries about at night.

*Isnt all food bad in excess of RDA?*

There is a big difference between eating in an unhealthy way and selling a product that has known health effects that are especially egregious for kids, so don’t pay any kind to the other counterargument big chocolate likes to press: that any food in excess is unhealthy.

It’s now wrong, but it’s a classic straw man argument (or a cake or cupcake argument really). So then “should we make cupcakes illegal then?”

Well. Uh. Unfortunately: yes, if they contain large amounts of cadmium or any measurable amount of lead we absolutely should — no amount of lead in food is considered “safe” especially for kids.)).

*You must hate chocolate.*

I love chocolate. Why can’t we process this stuff out of it so we can enjoy it properly? Anyone an expert in heavy metals removal from food? Save chocolate please. The world needs you.

*This is just one article on one piece of research.*

A few earlier articles and research that bolsters the case:

https://www.confectionerynews.com/Article/2015/02/16/Lead-an...

https://www.reddit.com/r/YouShouldKnow/comments/10y9yhe/ysk_...

https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/heavy-metals-fou...

https://time.com/6243073/heavy-metals-dark-chocolate-food/

There’s also a big difference between ethically sourced, tester boutique chocolate and Hersheys/Cadburys type swill that isn’t fit for the name.

What does ethical sourcing have to do with heavy metal poisoning?

This is just conjecture but, some of the other comments here have said that the lead contamination come from environmental contamination during the harvesting and fermenting process. If non-ethically sourced cocoa is coming from farmers earning below poverty level incomes for their crops, they may not have the ability or incentive to avoid this contamination.

I've heard that mass-produced chocolate tends to source cocoa from the Ivory Coast, which has an alarming amount of heavy metals in their soil. This is just hearsay though, I don't have any specific sources that compare between Africa and South America.

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Sediment-trace-metal-c...

> I don't have any specific sources that compare between Africa and South America.

I do, but they'll kill me (figuratively) if I publish them.

Which highlights the issue of dark | private data.

There's the public USGS National Geochemical Database: Soil for central north america: https://mrdata.usgs.gov/ngdb/soil/

There's a Geochemical Atlas of Europe: http://weppi.gtk.fi/publ/foregsatlas/ and a "work in progress" Global Geochemical Baselines database under development that will reference the available glonal surveys in the public domain, buuuut ...

If you want solid usable data from across the globe you probably want to access the pooled transnational mega mining companies database of surface geochemical results, back in 2008 the <redacted> companies portion was some 16 TB of raw sample results from every conutry and territories across the globe. Not complete of course, but once you mosaic that with other collections of a similar size .. that's something pretty neat.

I should have known, but didn’t, that international soil databases of this size existed in private hands. I’ve only seen the USDA surveys.

Kind of mind blowing.

from TFA:

> High cadmium levels are almost exclusively found in cacao beans grown in South America, with beans grown in West Africa showing little contamination.

Yes, the cadmium is from volcanic soil. That's not the only heavy metal.

Hersheys actually has very few heavy metals. They come from cacao so cheap milk chocolate has far fewer than boutique dark ones.

Yes, there's a big difference. The "ethically sourced, tester boutique chocolate" is likely to have higher levels of heavy metals.

The larger companies are better able to setup processes to avoid the metals - go look at the original data and see.

I don't know if that's necessarily the whole story.

Boutique chocolates tend to contain more cocoa solids and cocoa butter. Larger companies tend not to use as much and instead have fillers like palm oil.

It's then no surprise that a boutique dark chocolate might have more contaminants than mass-produced milk or dark chocolate.

So then compare to the mass produced dark chocolate that doesn't have filers. There's tons of it, just plain dark chocolate chips. (As opposed to a candy bar.)

>It’s now wrong, but it’s a classic straw man argument (or a cake or cupcake argument really — “should we make cupcakes illegal then?” (Uh. Yes, if they contain large amounts of cadmium or lead we absolutely should — you want me to give lead paint in food to your kids?)).

It's ironic that in the course of calling out a straw man, that you went with an example that's the easiest to defeat. What about tuna? They also contain large amounts of heavy metals, so much so that some authorities recommend you only eat a few cans a week. Should we banning tuna as well?

Actually, yes, but more because we're causing the species to disappear and they're an integral part of the worldwide biosphere. Systems of systems are kooky.

I suppose the difference is that we openly acknowledge the risks of eating wild fish and dissuade people from consuming too much.

This is the answer.

The selenium in certain fish (particularly, it seems, tuna) may be enough to offset the adverse effects of the mercury present (known as the "health benefit value of selenium (HBVSe)": https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/FS437

Theoretically if I was consuming 3 teaspoons per day (that's 17g approximately) wouldn't I be in danger even if the cadmium and lead levels are under the FDA levels?

It doesn't mention accumulation because that's already factored in. The levels they are talking about are a daily amount, not a single dosage.

You accumulate when you can’t eliminate fast enough. Some sources indicate you can safely eliminate up to ~30mcg of cadmium per day. Many of these bars appear to have 10-12mcg. So, if you ate one bar daily, you would never accumulate. Four bars daily would be a different story.

That’s cadmium. You don’t eliminate lead to the same degree.

From my reading the disagreement is about how often or much chocolate people consume. The thresholds (MADL, EU) are in µg/day and the Consumer Reports numbers are in µg/serving.

Arstechnica somewhat bridges this gap at the end with quotes including "at these intake levels", "A single serving", "from time to time", "indulging during holidays".

Exactly, so as an abnormally avid chocolate consumer, I'm still scared (and even more than before reading Arstechnica's take).

I used to eat a large bar of very dark, high quality, chocolate per day (having to constantly explain to onlookers that the whole bar had the sam sugar as a half cup of milk). I’m sure I was in the 99th percentile for cocoa. I stopped when I saw this coming a few years ago.

That's me exactly. I used to eat half a bar of 85% - 100% dark daily. The (relatively) recent info on heavy metals has me really bummed. Why is everything always so toxic these days???

My new goal is to figure out how to get all this heavy metal accumulation out of me (I've been eating heavy dark chocolate regularly for years), and find ways I can keep eating chocolate without absorbing more. Some studies I've read mention that tomatoes might help prevent heavy metal absorption when consumed with the source.

It isn’t always a modern affliction. Some food plants just do this, pulling heavy metals from the soil. You’ve heard of arsenic in brown rice.

So about that... a portion of the arsenic in the Southern US is from old pesticides used on cotton!

The only good news about that is levels are constantly dropped as it gets "used up".

However this is only a portion, in many places arsenic is just there in the ground.

The issue with lead is you can have a sub clinical amount from a dozen or even a hundred sources and end up with significant issues. Thus the threshold needs to be set extremely low for any individual source.

Arstechnica is really understating the risks here. While global chocolate consumption is 7.2 million metric tons that isn’t split evenly among 8 billion people resulting in 1.8kg/person per year instead the majority of the global population is 0-0.5kg/person and the rest is increasingly concentrated.

It’s not that uncommon to find someone eating a 1.6oz Hershey chocolate bar per day or the equivalent amount in whatever brand they prefer. If they happen to like an unusually high concentration brand the amount on its own might not seem concerning but it combines with every other source in their life and their lifetime accumulation from other sources.

For someone in the upper 1% of chocolate consumption, lead intake via chocolate is unlikely to be anywhere near the top of their list of health risk factors.

Why? Eating very dark chocolate does not increase other morbidity factors.

I'm one of these ones. Sometimes eating two bars of 98% chocolate per day. Sometimes more.

The fats in it are not unhealthy, and the sugar amount is also very low.

What are you basing that on?

It could easily be the largest risk factor from chocolate.

In Switzerland the average person is consuming 8.8kg/year (22lb), and the country is quite healthy by international standards. They have the lowest obesity rate in Europe and and half that of America which averages significantly lower levels of chocolate consumption.

Depends, you may consume cocoa but not chocolate. Heavy metals are still there.

> instead the majority of the global population is 0-0.5kg/person

Count me closer to that 0 number. I can't think of the last time I ate any chocolate. Never was much into sweets or snacking.

> It’s not that uncommon to find someone eating a 1.6oz Hershey chocolate bar per day

I can think of two acquaintances who consume at least that a day.

I mean cool, that’s great. You still get up and drive around/go out to eat surrounded by people who live in your society and make average choices.

All of them being lead poisoned effects you, even if “well hurr durr I don’t eat chocolate so I’m fine”

Which is the vibe your comment is radiating

My comment had nothing to do with lead nor did it imply "im fine because i dont eat any."

I was simply agreeing with the statistics and analysis of the average chocolate consumption.

> Never was much into sweets

Not all chocolate is sweet. I would claim that none of the good stuff is. The bars I used to eat, before stopping for the heavy metals, had 7 grams of sugar.

>Arstechnica is really understating the risks here.

Glad to see my Ars ban in 2015 was ahead of the curve, and sad they are still churning out the same garbage that got them blacklisted in the first place.

ConsumerLab is a good source for this kind of information. They lab tested almost 50 chocolates [1]. They found that two of the cocoa mixes were concerning for children but consider cadmium to be a major problem for chocolate. I switched from Alter Eco (one of the highest in cadmium in their tests) to Endangered Species (one of the lowest in their tests).

Sadly the lead in chocolate appears to come from general environmental exposure to lead, including during processing. Cadmium on the other hand likely comes from the soil.

[1] https://www.consumerlab.com/reviews/cocoa-powders-and-chocol...

omg Alter Ego was one of my favourites, especially their truffle packs. Time to change?

> Generally, cadmium primarily gets into chocolate pre-harvest as the cacao plant pulls it up from the soil, while lead is a post-harvest contaminant, primarily from handling of wet beans, such as from dust and soil that gets on the cacao beans as they are dried outdoors.

> Simply improving manufacturing processes—removing contaminants during processing and cleaning—can easily reduce lead levels, and some companies are doing a relatively better job at this than others.

> But cadmium is a little more difficult. The metal is naturally found in volcanic soil and can spread into agricultural areas via mining, phosphate fertilizers, and municipal sludge. High cadmium levels are almost exclusively found in cacao beans grown in South America, with beans grown in West Africa showing little contamination.

As much as I don't want cadmium in my cadbury, if it's coming from volcanic soil and not from negligent processing, then for some reason I find myself not caring as much. They should address the mining run-off issue though.

Sounds like a business opportunity for someone to start growing and processing premium metals-free cacao.

Recent and related:

A third of chocolate products are high in heavy metals - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38038465 - Oct 2023 (199 comments)

Also:

Do I need to avoid dark chocolate now? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35216973 - March 2023 (62 comments)

Hershey sued over chocolate containing heavy metals - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34179115 - Dec 2022 (9 comments)

Lead and Cadmium Could Be in Your Dark Chocolate - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34016384 - Dec 2022 (11 comments)

Research reveals ways lead and cadmium in chocolate may be reduced - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34014515 - Dec 2022 (82 comments)

Consumer Group’s Test Finds Lead, Cadmium in Some Chocolate Treats - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11359270 - March 2016 (1 comment)

Fuck ArsTechnica.

Center For Disease Control (CDC):

“No safe blood level in children has been identified. Even low levels of lead in blood have been shown to affect a child's learning capacity, ability to pay attention, and academic achievement. The effects of lead exposure can be permanent.”

https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/docs/lead-levels-in-children-f...

World Health Organization (WHO):

“There is no known safe blood lead concentration; even blood lead concentrations as low as 3.5 µg/dL may be associated with decreased intelligence in children, behavioural difficulties and learning problems.”

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/lead-poison...

Mayo Clinic:

“There is no safe blood level of lead.”

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/lead-poisonin...

Columbia University:

“Lead and Children: No Amount of Lead is Safe”

https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/lead-poison-and-children...

Literally from the article:

> JECFA most recently concluded that it was not possible to determine the health-protective limit. No level of lead is safe, per se.

There is no safe level, but zero lead intake is also practically impossible, and the amount in chocolate is extremely low. That is the point they are making.

That doesn’t mean throw up your hands and do nothing. It’s a spectrum… do what you can. Just like ingesting micro plastics. There are things you can reduce (but not eliminate) your intake, such as not microwaving plastic with food.

For sure, but it also means don’t have a meltdown about minuscule amounts in a food that basically no one eats that much of anyway.

Edit: aside from the Swiss, apparently

I hate this.

“No known safe level” is not the same as “no safe level”. And that is not equal to “no amount”.

Stupid press releases and newspapers use all three all the time. While in reality, we almost always can state only the first one. They just flat out lie.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t avoid it, and pay attention, but we shouldn’t think in absolutist terms either.

Typical Ars Technica payola.. like the time they bizarrely defended the company that owns Audacity after effectively threatening violence against a Chinese OSS developer.

You people are just waiting for the next crisis to emerge and ruin your lives. This is called “anxiety.”

Consumer reports has an agenda or is incompetent. Maybe for dishwashers, paint, or mattresses, but most of their reviews are biased or poorly reviewed.

The classic example is the way they dinged Tesla for the full self driving because it went through a stop sign, and then when you examine their video closely you can see on the left side of the dash that the FSD wasn't even engaged (steering wheel should be blue). Their explanation after they were caught didn't even make grammatical sense.... Canceled my subscription after that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQOf_F6hibk&t=350s

you had me, then ya lost me.

They reviewed sunscreens this past summer. Not a SINGLE mention of the numerous recalls due to benzene. In fact, some of the recalled products were in their article! And the article came out AFTER the first wave of recalls.

Bullshit. There is no known safe level of lead.

But also I could die tomorrow, so let's eat the tasty poison today

Which is of course something they mention in the article, but actually zero lead intake is not a viable goal.

If you’re eating it every day it’s a problem.

Is the accumulation metals why you say eating chocolate every day is a problem?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com