WHAT ABOUT LEAD AND CADMIUM?
By Red Thalhammer
There is a lot of recent discussion on lead and cadmium in some chocolate brands that I wanted to address: A study from a consumer reports organization has tested mostly large and some small brands on cadmium and lead levels. Out of the 28 tested, 23 bars of chocolate — which were produced by the likes of Trader Joe’s, Tony’s, Pascha, Lily’s, Hu, Hershey’s, Godiva, and Lindt to name a few that had super high levels of either lead or cadmium. The smaller premium brands they tested were all ok. I’m glad to hear that buying premium quality proofs to be healthy in that regard as well. Antidote was not part of this test, but we do tests ourselves. We'll talk more about Cadmium soon on how to read the data properly and in correlation to EU standards.
Do you wonder how cadmium and lead gets into chocolate? Cadmium is absorbed through the soil into the trees. All our fine aroma cacao is form Ecuador and luckily Ecuador has not had much problem with cadmium. It can happen in a spotty way though. Peru in the contrary can have high levels of it, as well as Colombia.
Lead on the other hand is a post harvest issue, and can be prevented with proper and save fermentation and drying practices. Knowing our farmers, their process and facility of their post-harvest practices, I can say with confidence that there is no issue for the cacao we use at Antidote.