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Ethically sourced and not too sugary. I make sure to grab a selection of Tony's Chocolonely bars whenever I'm in the Netherlands. It's second to none.
Belgian chocolate is of course also great. I love Galler, it's good but not overly pretentious/expensive.
Dark chocolate in small doses; if I want to go wild a milk chocolate with something salty (sea salt, salty roasted almonds, salty caramel, freaking corn flakes for that matter) is always a treat.
Better check the lead levels on that one.
I read the Consumer Reports article you linked, but honestly I can't imagine lead levels in chocolate is something anyone would need to be concerned about.
The testing methodology CR used boils down to 'we sent the chocolate to a laboratory for testing and turns out there's lead above the safe limit in each bar.' Consumers aren't going to do this.
Also, the list on the article is flawed in my opinion. It shows the amount of lead and cadmium found in each chocolate bar, but doesn't scale it to the size of the bar. CR estimates in their risk assessment the daily consumption of chocolate by looking at the portioning of the bars on the nutrition label, and the average by the FDA of 30g.
In Tony Chocolonely's case, these figures are the same. As their regular bar size is 180g and the portioning is 1/6 a bar - 30g. This means that the CR listing a Tony's bar at 134% of the daily limit of lead, it would also mean eating 500% the amount of chocolate the FDA expects.
If you adhere to the average of 30g, Tony's is only 22% your daily lead limit.
Don't get me wrong, I've eaten a full bar in a day. But it's far from a daily occurrence, and I'm certainly not thinking of the health ramifications when I indulge.
Even at 265% the lead limit, the Hershey's bar is 120g, so a portion is 66%. The most frightening thing about that bar is that it's Hershey's.
If you EVER limit yourself to a portion of a bar you've got to be the only person in the world who does that.
Of course not. That's why consumer reports does it for them. You don't believe samples are representative? That's ridiculous.
If you eat several bars of chocolate every day you probably have other things to worry about than lead poisoning.
Who said several?
Look, I've no interest in arguing the percentage of people that eat a full chocolate bar in one sitting vs not.
What I will point out is that according to a couple headlines I skimmed just now, Snickers appears to be America's chocolate bar of choice, weighing in at 50g. In the comment you replied to, I was talking about a 180 gram bar of of chocolate.
You won't catch me eating three and a half Snickers.
Moving on.
I like Consumer Reports. The samples of bars they chose across the chocolate industry seem fine to me. Where I take issue is in the way the data is presented. The article represents neither the manufacturers portion sizing on the nutrition label nor the FDA daily consumption figure.
Also, I'm sure it's only a fraction of people that bother to read the nutrition labels before purchase. If lead content was written there, then that small group of people would see that information.
I only meant that even these people wouldn't bother with this type of due diligence - that it would necessitate an organization like Consumer Reports. While it's an important thing to check, and I am glad they did the checking, my overall point was that the results tell me that lead and cadmium levels in chocolate are not something anyone needs to be particularly concerned about.
I buy large bars of milk chocolate and break off a row of 4 squares to eat at a time. If I'm feeling extra "snacky", I'll take another row. I think that's still less than one of their regular-sized bars.
A lot of candy bars, I'll eat half at a time, or split it with my partner.
I'm about 6' tall and on the upper end of a "healthy" BMI.