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Consumer Reports finds more lead and cadmium in chocolate, urges change at Hershey
(www.reuters.com)
Mmm Cadmium Eggs are my favorite
this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
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Also, please make your chocolate taste less nasty Hershey.
serious question: why not simply buy some other chocolate that tastes better?
It's more expensive. It's why I cut down on chocolate once I tasted real chocolate. I couldn't go back to Hershey's.
Just about any other brand milk chocolate is better than Hershey's milk chocolate bars. My favorite is Lindt.
I generally prefer dark chocolate once I learned there was more than "Shitty Hershey Dark Chocolate" in existence, so I go with Ghirardelli. 72% cocoa, that's the stuff.
Answer, because not everything you purchase is straight to chocolate and you don't always get an option of where the chocolate is sourced
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If I had to name any chocolate that tastes like it has lead and cadmium in it, that'd be Hershey's.
I haven't eaten Hershey's in so long because I remember it tasting mildly of vomit. Am I the only one who thinks the flavor has hints of vomit? What even is that?
The sour notes in America’s most popular chocolate are commonly attributed to butyric acid—a compound found in spoiled butter and, yes, vomit. Hershey denies adding it to their product, and the ingredient isn’t listed on the label, but that doesn’t mean it’s not part of the recipe.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/why-american-chocolate-tastes-like-vomit
Honestly, I can barely taste it, so I don't mind. I don't think Hershey is that bad. It's not good, but it's not bad. It's the cheap stuff.
Lead and cadmium aside. No food product should have either of those in it.
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A confused spokesperson for Hershey argued that none of their products actually contain real chocolate.
Cannot be sold as chocolate in the EU for two reasons;
1.it doesn't contain the menial amount(10%!) of chocolate required to be labeled as such.
- No one wants to buy that awful tasting shit
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I like their cadmium berry eggs during Easter.
To each their own but the lead kisses are a bit sweeter which is more my cup of polonium.
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Thank goodness that their horrid rotten flavor is a perfect deterrent for anyone who ever had real chocolate.
US troops giving Hershey chocolates to Iraqi and Afghani children should be considered a war crime. Here, I said it.
Hershey's be like "the slaves who were responsible for putting the poison in the chocolate have been shot. New slaves are being brought in forthwith."
Well, now we know where the lead came from
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There's more lead allowed in a liter of drinking water in the US than a serving of any of the chocolates being reported, as far as I can find. (15 micrograms per liter.) Provided nobody's eating a few dozen bars of chocolate in a single sitting I can't imagine accumulating enough to cause acute harm from the chocolate alone. Chasing down Hershey, Nestle et al to hold them accountable is great, but in terms of toxic metals we'd have more success and greater impact lighting up the news about water supplies.
Just mildly frustrated that I continue to see talk about chocolate while drinking water is a necessity and consumed in greater amounts daily but rarely gets reported outside of extreme cases like Flint.
Sure, but getting that same amount of lead from water as well as each type of food you eat is going to add together.
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Here are last year's testing results, in a table with filters:
https://www.asyousow.org/environmental-health/toxic-enforcement/toxic-chocolate#chocolate-tables
If you sort by highest lead content you get "NOW Healthy Foods Certified Organic Cocoa Powder 100% Pure" as the top result, and highest cadmium content you get "Sunfood Super Foods Raw Cacao Powder- Certified Organic" at the top. I find it hilariously ironic that the two highest ones are "Certified Organic". Also, the highest lead one was "100% pure".
What does the "ug" stand for in that table. It isn't actually a "u" but it kind of looks like a u
that's Greek letter mu. It means micrograms or one millionth of a gram
Thank you
Micrograms
Thank you
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So now maybe they can mine chocolate for raw material to make batteries. :-o
Ahh yes, lead and cadmium. Every chocolate factory has a lot of that laying around.
I mean they kinda do, the cacao tree pulls ~~those elements~~ (cadmium) out of the soil or the cacao is in contact with soil containing those elements during processing. Many brands have issues with lead and cadmium but it can be mitigated by choosing a better supplier, frequent testing, and protecting product better during shipment. Mentioning Hershey's is going to draw a lot of attention especially right before Halloween but it's a common issue in chocolate.
Edited with some corrections. Also mrchampion pointed out further down in this thread that it is likely the lead contamination comes from leaded gasoline during shipment.
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.
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But we just brought out "Her She" packaging. Now you want us to remove lead, which was saving us over a quarter cent per pallet? Millennial entitlement is truly boundless.
Here's Consumer Reports Dec. 2022 report that lists chocolate by company.
This was the report that started a run on dark chocolate from certain sources that helped raise prices to the crazy levels they are now (along with a worldwide shortage).
I ate a chunky bar the other night, because you know, sadness, and then went for a run a while later. A mile or so in my kidneys started to hurt. I can't say it was for sure the chunky bar but they haven't hurt like that before or since. What type of villainous corporate hack poisons the thing that's supposed to be the small escape of joy?
Also, Chunky is Nestle but still my bias says poison. I'm prepared to now receive your insults for liking Chunky bars.
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