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Comment by slwvx | Hacker News Reader

On the other other hand rat poop, bug bits, mice hair can be in your chocolate. And an asteroid can destroy earth tomorrow. I don't think any of these things should be especially worrying.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/04/health/insect-rodent-filth-in...

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Unlike those other things, which are external contaminants that find their way in due to non-sanitary processing conditions, cadmium and lead in chocolate come from the soil the cocoa trees grow in, and end up in the beans themselves, in a way that is effectively impossible to extract from them.

Also, from what I've read in other sources, the higher the cocoa content in chocolate, the higher the mineral content (including these "bad minerals") in the chocolate.

And also — frustratingly — the soil that has these soil minerals, is also the soil that imparts what people generally consider to be more interesting/tasty terroir into the chocolate. The single-source, ethical, sustainable chocolate? Highest heavy-metal content.

When I die, one should asses wether it’s cancer or not.

In case not, my case would prove that chocolate is almost surely not dangerous

It's disturbing to think about, but there is a "safe" level of rat shit, bug parts, and mouse hair while there is no safe level of lead and while food contaminated with feces can make you sick, heavy metal poisoning can make you measurably dumber which is more frightening to me.

One could argue that one atom of anything is not dangerous.

Therefore it is proven that there is a level of anything that is dangerous yet.

That CNN article is a light-weight review of select food defects allowed, not measured, by the FDA and chosen by the author for their yuck factor. I wouldn't let any of it justify a dismissiveness of heavy metals in dark chocolate.

The Consumer Reports article presents investigative results that measured actual heavy metals levels in dark chocolate. It's worth considering by anyone encouraged to increase their dark chocolate consumption by the diabetes study.

We are tiny motes of meat briefly living in a thin layer around an insignificant wet rock circling a mediocre star in the backwaters of a mediocre galaxy.

The universe is incredibly, unimaginably stupidly big; how significant is eating a little bit of dirt in your chocolate compared to that?

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