Also, please make your chocolate taste less nasty Hershey.
If I had to name any chocolate that tastes like it has lead and cadmium in it, that'd be Hershey's.
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.
The options are essentially Nestle or Hershey chocolate here in the US. You kinda gotta pick your poison
Bullshit, there's plenty of good chocolate in any major retailer. I can go to my local grocery store and find Godiva, Ghirardelli, Lindt, Ritter, along with a wide selection of miscellaneous European imports.
The stuff you'll find in stores is not "premium chocolatier in the Swiss Alps" quality, but it's decent chocolate and it's not hard to find.
Big agree. People won't admit it, but they just buy what they're familiar with and complain about it being bad.
I think a large detterent for many is the price difference. Hershey's kind of matches that snack price for a little treat you'd find at the front counter. Going back to the good stuff and seeing it 3 or 4 times the price will lose a lot of people. There's a reason people say you get what you pay for though...
That's fair and probably true also!
I am buying $1 bars of dark chocolate at dollar general now. Luckily I haven't really had good chocolate, so I don't know what I am really missing, and I like it better than Hershey's milk chocolate to me. Claims profits help literacy, so I doubt it is really that great of a chocolate when you get down to it. But I like it and that is enough for me.
Chocolate made it all the way down to snack price because of slavery and a lack of safety. So I no longer treat chocolate as a snack.
There’s a large range of smaller brands too. Pascha, Cultura, Raaka, Taza, Lily’s, Theo’s, Tony’s, Green and Black, Alter Eco… plus dozens of tiny regional brands. It’s about like craft beer.
The only American chocolate I like is made by Wilbur. Far, far better than anything Hershey or Nestle makes.
I used to go to the Wilbur museum all the time! The milk chocolate Wilbur buds are some of the best chocolates I’ve ever had.
Unfortunately the factory in Lititz shut down in 2016 so the town doesn't smell like chocolate anymore.
Never been there, never even knew this little fact but now I’m sad for that town.
That town has gotten pretty ritzy in recent years since Lady Gaga moved in next door and they added a fancy new production center near the airport. Big name tours use the space to build and test lighting and sound setups, so there's a lot of rock stars in town.
The factory still sells chocolate, too.
ugh sounds horrible
You can find way more than that available at a chocolate shop, organic/natural grocery store or coffee shops and bookstores.
For mass produced maybe but there's tons of quality options all over the states
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?
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
Pretty sure the percentage of milk fat is also too low for American Hershey's chocolate to be classified as chocolate in Europe.
Why would any milk fat be required for something to be defined as chocolate? Chocolate doesn't have to contain any milk at all. The only thing my brief research turned up was this, stating that they could only contain up to 5% non cocoa vegetable fats.
Edit:
This claims there is a minimum milk fat for milk chocolate, but no requirement for chocolate in general.
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.
"Lead kisses," sounds like something an American cop would call their bullets as they tenderly complete the filling of their 12th magazine.
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."
We apologize again for the fault in our chocolate. Those responsible for sacking the slaves who have just been sacked, have been sacked.
Well, now we know where the lead came from
Shareholders won't be happy about wasting all those profits on bullets...should have just stopped feeding them.
Pretty much.
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.
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
I love lemmy, if nothing else because you can ask serious questions about something you don't know and not get, "Google it n00b" as the response!
Lead would be considered organic to the extent that it's not added to the product. Hell arsnic is organic.
If by that you mean that the lead was naturally added when it was growing and not during any processing stages, then see https://lemmy.world/comment/4831887. According to an article I found, most of the lead seems to be coming from the the cocoa being processed, not from when it was first grown. Although, it IS only one article, so I may be wrong.
That's because cacao containing cadmium/lead is an "organic"(ish) problem. The cacao tree pulls it from the soil.
Edited (See below for correction)
That's interesting, I didn't know that before, so I did a bit of research on this, and while you are right that Cacao seeds do absorb some lead naturally when growing, a couple studies have shown that most of the lead that ends up in cacao likely comes from after the farming stage,
Because of the high capacity of cocoa bean shells to adsorb lead, contamination from leaded gasoline emissions may occur during the fermentation and sun-drying of unshelled beans at cocoa farms.
... However, the much higher lead concentrations and larger variability in lead isotopic composition of finished cocoa products, which falls within the global range of industrial lead aerosols, indicate that most contamination occurs during shipping and/or processing of the cocoa beans and the manufacture of cocoa and chocolate products.
source
So most lead contamination came from processing the chocolate rather than from the tree absorbing it. Also, the same article says that the lead is likely from gasoline vapors, not from the soil,
One source of contamination of the finished products is tentatively attributed to atmospheric emissions of leaded gasoline, which is still being used in Nigeria. Because of the high capacity of cocoa bean shells to adsorb lead, contamination from leaded gasoline emissions may occur during the fermentation and sun-drying of unshelled beans at cocoa farms. Source (same as before)
I haven't read the whole article, but I think this is good enough to serve as a counter-argument. Also, I know the article says "cocoa" instead of "cacao", but it seems "cocoa" is basically just processed "cacao", according to this article on healthline. So basically, the use of cacao and cocoa is inconsistent and may just refer to cocoa beans and/or processed cocoa beans.
Also, I found this article, which seems like the abstract to this source, but I can't figure out if it really is or not. If anyone has any idea of the relationship between the two articles I'd be happy to hear it.
That's some pretty solid research! Thanks for taking the time to look into it and correct me. I didn't realize leaded gasoline was still widely used. It will likely continue to poison the soil as well.
It does appear there is some bioaccumulation of cadmium (PDF) though/contamination from the soil during processing as CyberDine pointed out.
Whoa, that site is awesome! I switch between Ghirardelli's and Lindt's super dark bar varieties. Looks like I need to stick with Ghirardelli.
Thanks.
Maybe they are making them cadmium eggs for Easter’s.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The common thread seems to be the concentration of cocoa solids, since all the concerning products had greater levels (dark chocolate, powders, etc). The Chucky bar being milk chocolate should be fine, per the article.
They're not fine, if it's Nestlé.
If you are taking about supporting a particularly flagrant bad corporate actor, then I agree. If about the safety of the milk chocolate, then the article indicates otherwise.
Cool they used a picture of a chocolate bar even when chocolate bars were the one thing that consistently did not have heavy metals.
Mmm Cadmium Eggs are my favorite
How did you get two down votes for that joke. That was brilliant
Inaccurate. Hershey doesn't make Cadbury.
Also, please make your chocolate taste less nasty Hershey.
If I had to name any chocolate that tastes like it has lead and cadmium in it, that'd be Hershey's.
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.
The options are essentially Nestle or Hershey chocolate here in the US. You kinda gotta pick your poison
Bullshit, there's plenty of good chocolate in any major retailer. I can go to my local grocery store and find Godiva, Ghirardelli, Lindt, Ritter, along with a wide selection of miscellaneous European imports.
The stuff you'll find in stores is not "premium chocolatier in the Swiss Alps" quality, but it's decent chocolate and it's not hard to find.
Big agree. People won't admit it, but they just buy what they're familiar with and complain about it being bad.
I think a large detterent for many is the price difference. Hershey's kind of matches that snack price for a little treat you'd find at the front counter. Going back to the good stuff and seeing it 3 or 4 times the price will lose a lot of people. There's a reason people say you get what you pay for though...
That's fair and probably true also!
I am buying $1 bars of dark chocolate at dollar general now. Luckily I haven't really had good chocolate, so I don't know what I am really missing, and I like it better than Hershey's milk chocolate to me. Claims profits help literacy, so I doubt it is really that great of a chocolate when you get down to it. But I like it and that is enough for me.
Chocolate made it all the way down to snack price because of slavery and a lack of safety. So I no longer treat chocolate as a snack.
There’s a large range of smaller brands too. Pascha, Cultura, Raaka, Taza, Lily’s, Theo’s, Tony’s, Green and Black, Alter Eco… plus dozens of tiny regional brands. It’s about like craft beer.
The only American chocolate I like is made by Wilbur. Far, far better than anything Hershey or Nestle makes.
I used to go to the Wilbur museum all the time! The milk chocolate Wilbur buds are some of the best chocolates I’ve ever had.
Unfortunately the factory in Lititz shut down in 2016 so the town doesn't smell like chocolate anymore.
Never been there, never even knew this little fact but now I’m sad for that town.
That town has gotten pretty ritzy in recent years since Lady Gaga moved in next door and they added a fancy new production center near the airport. Big name tours use the space to build and test lighting and sound setups, so there's a lot of rock stars in town.
The factory still sells chocolate, too.
ugh sounds horrible
You can find way more than that available at a chocolate shop, organic/natural grocery store or coffee shops and bookstores.
For mass produced maybe but there's tons of quality options all over the states
it's Cadmium either way
Cadbury. Now with more Cadmium.
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?
i'm weird, i guess. i like the 'nasty' american chocolate. i just can't afford it except on november 1st.
It burns my throat when I eat it, along with other super processed foods that are somehow legal
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.
Pretty sure the percentage of milk fat is also too low for American Hershey's chocolate to be classified as chocolate in Europe.
Why would any milk fat be required for something to be defined as chocolate? Chocolate doesn't have to contain any milk at all. The only thing my brief research turned up was this, stating that they could only contain up to 5% non cocoa vegetable fats.
Edit: This claims there is a minimum milk fat for milk chocolate, but no requirement for chocolate in general.
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.
"Lead kisses," sounds like something an American cop would call their bullets as they tenderly complete the filling of their 12th magazine.
Thank goodness that their horrid rotten flavor is a perfect deterrent for anyone who ever had real chocolate.
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."
We apologize again for the fault in our chocolate. Those responsible for sacking the slaves who have just been sacked, have been sacked.
Well, now we know where the lead came from
Shareholders won't be happy about wasting all those profits on bullets...should have just stopped feeding them.
Pretty much.
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.
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
I love lemmy, if nothing else because you can ask serious questions about something you don't know and not get, "Google it n00b" as the response!
Lead would be considered organic to the extent that it's not added to the product. Hell arsnic is organic.
If by that you mean that the lead was naturally added when it was growing and not during any processing stages, then see https://lemmy.world/comment/4831887. According to an article I found, most of the lead seems to be coming from the the cocoa being processed, not from when it was first grown. Although, it IS only one article, so I may be wrong.
That's because cacao containing cadmium/
leadis an "organic"(ish) problem.The cacao tree pulls it from the soil.Edited (See below for correction)
That's interesting, I didn't know that before, so I did a bit of research on this, and while you are right that Cacao seeds do absorb some lead naturally when growing, a couple studies have shown that most of the lead that ends up in cacao likely comes from after the farming stage,
So most lead contamination came from processing the chocolate rather than from the tree absorbing it. Also, the same article says that the lead is likely from gasoline vapors, not from the soil,
I haven't read the whole article, but I think this is good enough to serve as a counter-argument. Also, I know the article says "cocoa" instead of "cacao", but it seems "cocoa" is basically just processed "cacao", according to this article on healthline. So basically, the use of cacao and cocoa is inconsistent and may just refer to cocoa beans and/or processed cocoa beans.
Also, I found this article, which seems like the abstract to this source, but I can't figure out if it really is or not. If anyone has any idea of the relationship between the two articles I'd be happy to hear it.
That's some pretty solid research! Thanks for taking the time to look into it and correct me. I didn't realize leaded gasoline was still widely used. It will likely continue to poison the soil as well.
It does appear there is some bioaccumulation of cadmium (PDF) though/contamination from the soil during processing as CyberDine pointed out.
Whoa, that site is awesome! I switch between Ghirardelli's and Lindt's super dark bar varieties. Looks like I need to stick with Ghirardelli.
Thanks.
Maybe they are making them cadmium eggs for Easter’s.
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.
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.
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.
The common thread seems to be the concentration of cocoa solids, since all the concerning products had greater levels (dark chocolate, powders, etc). The Chucky bar being milk chocolate should be fine, per the article.
They're not fine, if it's Nestlé.
If you are taking about supporting a particularly flagrant bad corporate actor, then I agree. If about the safety of the milk chocolate, then the article indicates otherwise.
Cool they used a picture of a chocolate bar even when chocolate bars were the one thing that consistently did not have heavy metals.