Lead Contamination

Question

How did you verify that the cacao sellers are lead free? Like Sunfood and Nativas, for example? I was unable to find that information anywhere. I am in the early stages of pregnancy and drink roughly three mugs of raw cacao per day for its health benefits, but am very worried that if it has lead it will harm my baby. There is a lab where I could send the powder for testing myself but it costs three hundred dollars so I would rather the companies do it themselves!

Thank you.

Answer

Thanks for getting in touch with me on this. Here's what I do...

I call their customer service and ask if I can have a copy of their certificate of analysis on a specific product. I also ask them if they test for heavy metals.

After digging out an earlier certificate of analysis from Sunfood which had heavy metals listed on the certificate, I called them to get more clarification on why the heavy metal tests were not listed on their most recent certificate. I also explained to the customer service representative why I was asking and how it was important for me to know.

The rep took the time to call the person who was responsible for the certificates in their company and was told they do not test for heavy metals if there is little risk. They test some products but not others. From their understanding, they consider their cacao beans are not exposed to machines that contain heavy metals where lead would be picked up. It was not as high a priority as other products that are being tested for heavy metals. She did tell me that cacao was on the horizon to be tested though.

I have another call to Navitas. I haven't heard back from them yet. I'll publish the response I receive in regards to a certificate of analysis for their raw cacao products. Navitas does publish the fact that they test for heavy metals.

This is what you can do to search any company website.

heavy metals site:navitasnaturals.com
heavy metals site:sunfood.com

If you use lead instead of heavy metals, you'll get lead as another more common usage i.e, "lead a group" or take the lead and show us what to do" - instead of the heavy metal, lead.

Once you find the google responses, you'll have to look through them to see if any pertain to lead or whatever you are looking for and then click the link to go to the website to get the details.

Here's what we have to do as consumers. When we need to know about ingredients or risks with any products we purchase, we need to call the specific companies and ask them. The more people who call or email them, they will become more aware of what we want from them.

I hope this will help you to find out. If you buy from Sunfood, call them as I have. This may show them we want to know what's in the food we are eating and rely on them to tell us.

- Janis