Love your chocolate now and forever

Love your chocolate now and forever

Most of us love chocolate.  Besides being a sweet treat, it’s a great source of anandamide which makes it a natural mood booster.  Dark chocolate specifically, has been touted as a rich supply of antioxidants and the “best choice” when it comes to candy.  Over the years, we have grappled with many issues surrounding the sourcing and production of chocolate including poverty among cocoa farmers, child labor and environmental issues.  Now we are learning about heavy metals in chocolate.  But don’t let that ruin your Valentine’s Day. Read on and see how you can love your chocolate now and forever.

A few month’s ago, a report by Consumer Labs came out stating that many of your favorite dark chocolate brands contained high levels or lead and or cadmium, two heavy metals that are toxic to humans.  Then, just in time for Valentine’s Day, the media cycle let loose bringing this study and another to many of your attention.  At Nuts’ n Berries, fear has no place.  So we dug in, read the reports, asked our peers and spoke directly with the manufacturers to find out if the dozen or so dark chocolate bars that we sold could possibly be unsafe for you to consume.  Long story short – THEY ARE SAFE, and so are you!

The Consumer Lab report used guidelines created with Prop 65, a law in the state of California only, that simply alert consumers to the presence of toxic substances.  Yes, dark chocolate contains cadmium to some degree.  That’s because it is in the soil where the beans are grown.  Want less exposure?  Choose chocolate from West Africa.  And yes, dark chocolate can sometimes consume lead.  This has to do with how the beans are processed post-harvest and the relative degree of toxic lead in the environment.  Both of these heavy metals are on the radar of not just us at Nuts ‘n Berries, but of each chocolate manufacturer.  They have been working on mitigation strategies like mixing low cadmium beans with beans that have higher levels of cadmium.  And they have been working to modernize and more safely process the beans post-harvest to reduce lead exposure.  All that being said, none of the bars we sell have heavy metals in quantities above the daily consumption levels as recommended by the FDA.  Additionally, we make sure that every brand of chocolate we sell is Fairtrade and non-GMO.

Valentine’s Day will come and go, but at Nuts ‘n Berries, we always love our customers and seek to provide you with the best information so that you can make decisions for yourself and your loved ones.  So feel free to ask us more about this topic or stop in the store and pick up your favorite dark chocolate bar.  And of course, if you need a bar with super low levels of heavy metals (that pass Prop 65 standards), try our local Xocolatl bars and feel good about your heavy metal levels and supporting a local business!  (Other brands that have extra low levels of heavy metals are Mast Organic Dark Chocolate, Taza Chocolate Organic Deliciously Dark Chocolate 70% and the Chocolove brand of dark chocolate)