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NEW ORLEANS — If you're a chocolate lover, particularly a fan of dark chocolate, you can breathe a sigh of relief. Despite a 2023 Consumer Reports finding that suggested some dark chocolate brands might contain harmful levels of lead and cadmium, a team from Tulane University is bringing good news. Researchers found that eating dark chocolate does not pose a threat to your health and may actually be one of the most nutritious foods you eat all day!
The findings, in a nutshell:
After testing 155 different chocolate bars from around the world, researchers found that dark chocolate poses no health risks for adults. In fact, it's quite the opposite — dark chocolate is packed with essential minerals like copper, iron, manganese, magnesium, and zinc. Some bars even provide more than half of your daily requirement of these nutrients. The cherry on top? These minerals might even help reduce the absorption of toxic metals in your body as they compete for the same space in your intestines.
While the study published in Food Research International did find that a few chocolate bars had higher levels of cadmium that could pose a slight risk to very young children — specifically those weighing around 33 pounds or less, about the size of an average three-year-old — it's not a common scenario. After all, how often do you see a toddler chowing down on more than two full chocolate bars in a week?
The researchers also looked at lead levels and found that while two bars had levels above California's health standards for dark chocolate, they didn't pose any risks to children or adults. So, for the vast majority of us, enjoying dark chocolate isn't just safe; it's a potentially healthy choice.
“What we’ve found is that it’s quite safe to consume dark chocolate and milk chocolates,” says lead author Tewodros Godebo, an assistant professor of environmental health sciences at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, in a media release.
How did researchers make this discovery?
To reach these reassuring conclusions, the Tulane University team didn't just grab a few chocolate bars from the local supermarket. Instead, they collected a massive sample of 155 different dark and milk chocolates from various global brands sold throughout the United States. This large sample size — bigger than in previous studies — gives their findings more weight and reliability.
They didn't stop at just testing for lead and cadmium, the two metals that had raised concerns. The researchers expanded their scope, testing each chocolate bar for the presence of 16 different heavy metals. Some of these, like lead and cadmium, are toxic. Others, like copper and zinc, are essential for our health. Then, they modeled what would happen if someone ate one ounce of each chocolate every day. That's no small amount — it's equivalent to downing more than two whole chocolate bars every week. This approach helped them understand the real-world implications of their findings.
The team also took geography into account. They sorted the chocolates based on where they came from and discovered some interesting trends. Dark chocolates from South America, for instance, had higher levels of cadmium and lead compared to those from Asia and West Africa. This makes sense because much of the lead in chocolate comes from post-harvest processing, while cadmium seeps into the cacao bean from the soil it grows in.
Here's the key takeaway: even with these regional differences, eating an ounce of South American chocolate daily still posed no adverse risk to health. This global perspective adds another layer of reassurance for chocolate lovers everywhere.
