I’m a certified chocoholic, and I’ve gained a bit of notoriety for devouring chocolate bars to the point of feeling queasy. However, my enthusiasm took a hit when I learned about the recent findings from Consumer Reports.
Consumer Reports, a respected nonprofit focused on consumer issues, conducted tests on 48 different chocolate products.
Shockingly, a third of them were discovered to contain potentially harmful levels of lead and cadmium—and one brand stood out as a major concern: Hershey.
The organization urged Hershey to improve the purity of its chocolate products.
Yet, Hershey wasn’t the sole culprit. Trader Joe’s hot chocolate mixes, semi-sweet chocolate chips from Target, as well as products from Nestle and Starbucks, were all called out for their elevated levels of heavy metals.
Given that lead has a naturally sweet taste, detecting its presence in chocolate is nearly impossible. If that isn’t a disheartening revelation for fellow chocolate enthusiasts, I don’t know what is.
