The Toxic Ingredient in Chocolate You Need to Know About
Cacao + sugar + a few other things = a food we all know and love: chocolate. It is commonly known that a diet high in chocolate candy can be bad for your health because of the high amount of sugar. But that isn’t the only thing making chocolate potentially harmful to your health. Although cacao is a natural ingredient derived from seeds, it can also carry some toxic properties. This is because of the soil the potentially toxic ingredient in chocolate is grown in. Much of the world’s cacao trees are located in Latin America. Here there are more traces of cadmium, a metal that can cause diarrhea, vomiting, and even kidney disease, according to the CDC. A team of researchers from Ecuador and Belgium are now looking to develop ways to reduce the amount of cadmium that ultimately ends up in cacao beans, according to a new report in the Journal of Environmental Quality.