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Do I need to avoid dark chocolate now?

nytimes.com

1–10 of 67 posts

Re: Do I need to avoid dark chocolate now?

#6
Disappointing that the NYT didn't actually buy some bars and have them tested, and report real numbers from the wild.

The quality of reporting on non-headline stuff in the NYT seems to be falling as of late.

This article doesn't really tell me anything.

Re: Do I need to avoid dark chocolate now?

#7

tl;dr: concentrations of cadmium and lead in dark chocolate, so no you don't need to avoid dark chocolate. Eat it in moderation.

Another manifestation of Betteridge's law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines

No, this is not an article. This is from the “ask column” and is a genuine question from someone eating dark chocolate every day including when she was pregnant and then breastfeeding.

The answer given is actually yes, probably, you should if you are pregnant or breastfeeding and limiting consumption the rest of the time would be wise.

Re: Do I need to avoid dark chocolate now?

#8
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 heavy metals, +5 for polyphenols”. If that’s the case, some things are clearly very bad, even if evil white bread comes in at -80.

Re: Do I need to avoid dark chocolate now?

#10
post #6

Disappointing that the NYT didn't actually buy some bars and have them tested, and report real numbers from the wild. The quality of reporting on non-headline stuff in the NYT seems to be falling as of late. This article doesn't really tell me anything.

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