
The History of Chocolate as a Health Food - ohjeez
http://www.canadapharmacyonline.com/blog/index.php/The-History-of-Chocolate-as-A-Health-Food/
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clumsysmurf
I've been enjoying Trader Joe's Pound Plus chocolate for years ..

... but just found out that it is one of many chocolates tested with positive
results for lead and cadmium.

[http://www.asyousow.org/our-work/environmental-
health/toxic-...](http://www.asyousow.org/our-work/environmental-health/toxic-
enforcement/lead-and-cadmium-in-food/)

If this is true, i'm in deep trouble :(

~~~
mikekchar
I find it odd that given that it's their own study they don't actually provide
it. If this is a case of, "We did our own study. No... it's not peer reviewed.
No... you can't see it. Just trust us, we did a good job." then I'm not really
inclined to give it much credence.

I'm also a bit concerned with their name-and-blame approach. Even in their FAQ
they surmise that it is likely that contamination came as a result of
agricultural processes. Hershey's, for example, must source it's chocolate
from just about everywhere. It's a BIG company. So, if Hershey's chocolate is
unsafe, I've got to think that _all_ chocolate is unsafe.

My internal pessimism make me think that this is more likely a case of an
environmental group using whatever means it can to cause alarm in the populace
and try to force changes in agricultural practices. What is rather unfortunate
is that such tactics simply polarize opinion. It will make it more difficult
to sway the opinions of those they need to convince because nobody will trust
them.

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kevin_thibedeau
What I find interesting is how Western marketing of chocolate changed sometime
in the 70's and took off in the 80's[1] to become a taboo indulgence, largely
directed at women as a substitute for unrequited sexual desire. This was
possibly done as a way to stem the loss of sales due to rising anti-sugar
sentiment. [2]

[1]
[https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=decadent+choco...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=decadent+chocolate&year_start=1970&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3)

[2]
[https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=unhealthy+suga...](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=unhealthy+sugar&year_start=1970&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3)

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somedangedname
This is blog-spam

