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.


So let's read them together. Calmly.

What we tested, and what we found

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. Here's what came back.

METAL RESULT PPB RESULT PPM
Cadmium 181 ppb 0.181 ppm
Lead 10.7 ppb 0.0107 ppm

(Medallion Labs, Order 2026-004307, Report #185653.1. Sample: Chopped Ceremonial Cacao, completed May 28, 2026.)

Two units appear there — ppm and ppb. The whole story lives in the difference between them, so it's worth a moment.

A quick word on the units

ppm means parts per million. ppb means parts per billion — a thousand times smaller. One is a thousand of the other, and 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.

Keep that thousand-fold gap in mind as we compare our numbers to the limits.

How we compare

A note on which limits we used. 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.

Both numbers sit far below where they need to be.

METAL OUR RESULT THE APPLICABLE LIMIT HOW WE COMPARE
Cadmium 181 ppb 800 ppb — EU, chocolate with ≥ 50% cocoa solids - 4.4 x below the limit (23% of the allowance)
Lead 10.7 ppb 200 ppb — California, > 95% cacao - 18.7 x below the limit (5% of the allowance)

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.

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 — and a small, mindful serving of cacao fits neatly inside that.

The bottom line

The numbers are small. The limits are clear. 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.

Big change can start with a little sip — and a little honesty about what's in the cup.

Sources

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