Cacao health | Cacao nutrition | Ceremonial cacao

Heavy Metals in Cacao: A Clear, Calm Look at the Numbers

Heavy metals in chocolate make for alarming headlines. The reality is quieter, and better. Read the numbers correctly, and a problem that sounds frightening turns out to be small, well understood, and — in our case — comfortably within every limit that applies.


We tested our cacao. The results came back far below every regulatory limit that applies to us. And a meaningful part of why comes down to something we do by hand, one bean at a time — but more on that below.


So let's read them together.

What the numbers say

We sent our ceremonial cacao to Medallion Labs — an A2LA-accredited lab working to the ISO/IEC 17025 standard, using ICP-MS, the method regulators rely on for this work.

A quick word on the units

Two units appear in our results — ppm and ppb. ppm means parts per million. ppb means parts per billion — a thousand times smaller. Regulators move between them freely, which is where confusion (and the occasional scary headline) creeps in.

To put that scale in perspective: a part per billion is about one second in thirty-two years. These are vanishingly small amounts — which is exactly why reading them correctly matters.

Both numbers sit far below where they need to be. The European Union sets a cadmium limit for cocoa-rich chocolate under Regulation (EU) 2023/915. It does not set a chocolate-specific limit for lead — so for lead we anchor to California, whose Proposition 65 framework, refined by a 2018 settlement, sets the most relevant concentration thresholds for a product as pure as ours.

Why peeling by hand matters

The science behind those California thresholds is illuminating. Cadmium and lead reach cacao by different routes.


Cadmium is drawn up from the soil through the tree's roots. It's part of the bean from the inside. Lead mostly settles on the outer shell during fermentation and drying. It clings to the surface.


That second point is the one we care about. Because lead concentrates on the shell, removing the shell removes most of the lead. We hand-peel every bean — one quiet reason our lead number comes in as low as it does.

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Concentration is not the same as exposure

Here's the idea that headlines almost always skip: how much of something is in a food is a different question from how much of it you actually take in.

Cocoa can read high per gram. But a serving is small, and across an entire diet, chocolate is a minor contributor.

EFSA estimates that chocolate products account for roughly 4.3% of total dietary cadmium. The larger sources are everyday staples — grains and cereals (~26.9%), vegetables (~16%), and potatoes and other starchy roots (~13.2%). For lead, the FDA's Total Diet Study points to grains, baked goods, and vegetables as the leading dietary sources.

None of that is cause for worry. The FDA's guidance is simply to eat a varied, nutrient-dense diet.

The bottom line

We're well under every one that applies, our process is built to keep it that way, and we'll keep testing and sharing what we find.

Sources

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