Chocolate Makers Are Urged to Get Lead and Cadmium Out of Their Products
Consumer Reports delivered a petition with almost 55,000 signatures to the four companies with bars that CR tests found were high in those heavy metals. Only one responded.
Levels of heavy metals in dark chocolate are sometimes surprisingly high, as shown by a recent Consumer Reports investigation.
CR scientists recently tested 28 different dark chocolate bars and found lead and cadmium in all of them. For 23 of those bars, eating a serving of about an ounce a day could potentially expose people to an amount of lead or cadmium that may have a negative health impact over time, particularly for vulnerable populations like children or anyone who is pregnant. Five of the bars we tested exceeded that threshold for both lead and cadmium.
Read Our Latest Special Report
A third of the brownie mixes, chocolate chips, hot cocoa, and other chocolate products CR tested contained concerning levels of lead or cadmium.
Photo: Consumer Reports Photo: Consumer Reports
Trader Joe’s took issue with CR’s food safety experts using California’s maximum allowable dose levels (MADL) in its analysis. The company says that these levels are meant to create an “ample margin of safety,” meaning that it takes higher levels than these to definitively cause harm.
CR’s experts disagree. “Consistent consumption of a food that exceeds the MADL for lead or cadmium can compromise the safety margin,” says Tunde Akinleye, the CR food safety researcher who led the chocolate testing project. “And for lead, there is no exposure level for young children to which an adverse health effect has not been identified.”
Cadmium and lead can accumulate in the body, and the best way to protect public health against the long-term health effects of these metals is to reduce exposure, he says: “We believe that the MADLs are the most health-protective limits.”
Trader Joe’s also pointed to the fact that California created new levels specifically for metals in chocolate when chocolate manufacturers settled a lawsuit related to products exceeding the MADL as one part of the settlement.
The company’s response is “an example of how companies try to confuse consumers into believing a legal standard is the same as a public health standard,” says Brian Ronholm, CR’s director of food policy. “It’s important for these companies to address this problem because consistent, long-term exposure to even small amounts of heavy metals can be harmful.”
Photo: Consumer Reports Photo: Consumer Reports
Akinleye notes that the levels agreed on in the lawsuit settlement are significantly higher than the MADL, and that “we do not believe or agree that changing the permissible level of lead or cadmium in a food mitigates the risks the food may pose to consumers.” And, he adds, “not only is it better to have heavy metals levels that are as low as possible in food, our tests show that it’s possible to make dark-chocolate bars that do not exceed the original MADL threshold.” Five of the 28 bars we tested—from Mast, Taza, Valrhona, and two from Ghiradhelli—were below that level for both metals.
For that reason, CR continues to urge manufacturers to do more to get metals out of chocolate.
“As for the companies that have not responded, it’s disappointing that they chose not to respond because it could give the impression that they are not interested in addressing an important public health issue,” Ronholm says.
In the meantime, consumers can help protect themselves by choosing chocolates with lower levels of heavy metals and by thinking of chocolate as a treat. Someone who eats a serving a few times a week instead of every day is unlikely to be exposed to high levels of heavy metals from chocolate alone.
