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Do I need to avoid dark chocolate now?

nytimes.com

21–30 of 67 posts

Re: Do I need to avoid dark chocolate now?

#25
post #24
post #21

Why would dark chocolate be worse than any other chocoloate (apart from concentration). If it's truly worse even per piece of cocoa, is it about the cocoa butter?

Just a matter of concentration. 80% of 100g is more than 40% of 100g. It's that simple.

How do we know that? I'd ask both us and NYT to be scientific about it.

Cargo culting science: "We tested dark chocolate and it was bad" => avoid dark chocolate and no further conclusions. (Media is full of this pattern.)

More rational investigation: "We tested dark chocolate and it was bad" => Find the problematic ingredient => What are the other places we use this ingredient?

Re: Do I need to avoid dark chocolate now?

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are the tests consumer reports did a while back: https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-...

Consumer Reports is just blogspam now. If you read anything they write about a topic you're expert in, you realise how much bullshit they spew. It's all just garbage to slap ads around.

> It's all just garbage to slap ads around.

The whole internet feels like that nowadays.

Re: Do I need to avoid dark chocolate now?

#27
post #13

It’s interesting how these things can be “healthy” and “unsafe” at the same time. Or maybe it’s because some of these health effects are often quite far-fetched (“may improve X”, “contains compounds which has, in other contexts, been known to be important for Y” whereas e.g. lead is very strongly correlated with negative effects. Makes me wonder on an “absolute scale” what we’re really talking about here: “-100 for h…

Everything is "healthy" and "unhealthy" depending on its amount. Good example is table salt. Too little and it feels unsatisfied, too much and it will poison you.

I think that the only things that are unhealthy in a "discrete" way are prions. Only one is enough to fuck you up.

Re: Do I need to avoid dark chocolate now?

#28

Homer Simpson suggestion: what if we put massive magnets in the production process?

That is in fact quite common in food production, but all it accomplishes is removing metal filings from processing machinery. It can't remove molecular metal contamination from the food itself.

Also, lead isn't ferrous.

Re: Do I need to avoid dark chocolate now?

#29

It’s interesting how these things can be “healthy” and “unsafe” at the same time. Or maybe it’s because some of these health effects are often quite far-fetched (“may improve X”, “contains compounds which has, in other contexts, been known to be important for Y” whereas e.g. lead is very strongly correlated with negative effects. Makes me wonder on an “absolute scale” what we’re really talking about here: “-100 for h…

The dose makes the poison.

Re: Do I need to avoid dark chocolate now?

#30

Admitting that the article is a "What should I do?" personal health advice column - it still struck me that the contamination has been well-known for decades, yet there is no hint at either the chocolate companies or regulators caring enough to even consider doing anything. (I don't count empty-platitude press releases from the former as "doing anything".) Idea: The FDA equips a few inspectors with good XRF (XRay Flu…

The levels have been recently lowered, IIRC.
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