A study found that many chocolate products exceeded the safe dosages for heavy metals such as lead and cadmium. — PIXABAY/Pexels
If you are already on the verge of breaking a few of your New Year resolutions, then you are definitely not alone. I am, of course, not advocating that anyone should break their pledges so quickly (or easily) but anything that involves lifestyle changes often has this mild annoyance factor and invokes a tiny feeling of discomfort.
A lot also depends on what those pledges are; some may be highly implausible, like winning the lottery, while some may be easier such as one of mine, which is to work less at my desk wearing only underwear.
Chocolate
But one resolution is going to be much easier to follow, and that is to eat much less chocolate, especially dark chocolate.
One must instinctively know there is something seriously wrong when the National Confectioners Association warns people about consuming a confectionary. They do not exactly say do not eat chocolate, but one can read between the lines in their statement, which includes ‘Food safety and product quality are the chocolate industry’s highest priorities’.
The fact that they need to spell out that food safety and quality is a priority is the immediate concern, because nobody issues a statement like that unless there are significant food safety and quality issues.
Shockingly, it was discovered that one of America's favourite brands contained 265% more lead than the legal limit. — POLINA TANKILEVITCH/Pexels
And with chocolate, especially dark chocolate, a study has found that 23 out of 28 tested chocolate products exceed the safe dosages allowed for dangerous heavy metals such as cadmium and lead. Eating just 30 grams of the contaminated chocolates would exceed the daily allowable limit for either cadmium or lead, while five of the tested chocolates would exceed the limit for both metals. One of America’s favourite brands contained 265% more lead than the legal limit while others had over double the limit for lead and/or cadmium.
The concern is that the chocolates tested were mostly American and large international brands, which therefore means that thousands of other brands have not been tested. And of course there is no legal requirement to list dangerous unintended contaminants in food products.
Sadly, one of those contaminated chocolates in the study happened to be one of my favourite Swiss dark chocolates, so that is what I am giving up this year. Definitely.
Some research established that cadmium is introduced into cocoa via the roots as this is a common heavy metal found around the world. Lead contamination is via dust, other air particles and surface soil which adheres to the outer sticky mucilage (a pulp known as baba) of the cocoa beans.
Contamination by other dangerous metals is quite widespread in other foods and crops too. Around 85% of the land surface area of Bangladesh is severely contaminated by arsenic, large areas of India are also affected, and there are similar problems in the USA, South America, China and other Asian countries.
Crops such as rice grown in such areas can contain unsafe levels of arsenic and an estimated 200 million people globally are at risk of arsenic poisoning. In Bangladesh, around 43,000 people die each year from arsenic poisoning. More information about arsenic in food is in my previous article ‘How to count food – Part 6’.
Other foods
Other foods also contain heavy metals. A Polish study from 2021 found that common vegetables such as beetroot, celery, carrots and tomatoes can also contain such metals at unsafe levels. In particular, samples of beetroot were found to be over six times the limit for cadmium, while tomatoes were over 10 times the limit for lead. So this validates another New Year resolution from past years, which is to buy and eat only organic vegetables whenever possible.
Vegetables such as beetroot, celery and tomatoes contain unsafe levels of heavy metals. — PIXABAY/Pexels
Curiously, the study also found that popular dried fruits can contain more heavy metals than fresh fruit. In all but one of the tested dried fruits, which include apple, grape (raisins), pear, raspberry, strawberry, etc, the dried fruit had 10 or more times the fresh fruit content of cadmium, lead or both. The only exception was cranberry, which was more or less was unaffected by desiccation.
Liver
One resolution made even before the New Year was to avoid foie gras due to the cruelty involved in producing it. But a nice hummus made with roasted garlic on round toasts went well with the Sauternes (the usual wine for foie gras) so it was not an overly great loss. In any case, it was probably also a huge cost saving because prices for duck products have gone up spectacularly due to the largest avian flu epidemic ever in Europe which has caused the culling of many millions of farm birds.
Also, foie gras looks uncomfortably too much like a human liver afflicted with Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD).
It is an established fact that over-consumption of alcohol leads to fatty, damaged livers, but what is less well known is that the human liver is also damaged by lousy diets without any hint of alcohol. And around the world, NAFLD is estimated to affect around 30% of the human population, a staggering statistic.
A small 2019 study on NAFLD using sonography (ultrasound) in Malaysia found that 48.3% of the men surveyed had NAFLD compared to 27.3% of women. Additionally, the study found that NAFLD was “strongly correlated with male sex, high body mass index, hypertriglyceridemia (too much fats circulating in the blood), low high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, diabetes mellitus, and hypertension.”
White flour is an example of a heavily-processed carbohydrate, which is one of the contributors of a fatty liver. — KABOOMPICS/Pexels
The links between NAFLD and various health conditions are not coincidences, and the Malaysian study was actually being restrained. It did not mention that chronic NAFLD also increases the risks of liver cancer, cardiovascular diseases, strokes, and inflammation disorders.
There are several stages of NAFLD, which starts with steatosis, the medical term for a fatty liver. If the liver continues to be abused, then steatosis leads to Non-Alcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH, also sometimes known as Hepatic Steatosis), a situation where the liver becomes inflamed and damaged. The next stage after NASH is fibrosis, a condition where scar tissue replaces damaged liver cells. Finally, the end stage is cirrhosis, when scarring of the liver becomes so severe that it is irreversible, turning the liver into mounds of hard nodules, eventually leading to liver failure.
The liver is a remarkably resilient organ, and generally able to repair itself, if allowed to. Up to the early stages of fibrosis, damage to the liver may still be reversed to some extent by dietary changes, so not every case of NAFLD inevitably leads to cirrhosis. In fact, a high percentage of people with NAFLD never progress past the stage of steatosis.
Why people develop NAFLD is an interesting puzzle, as the liver is not designed for storing fat in the first place. The main function of the liver is to metabolise dietary fats and synthesise lipoproteins and other fat-based structures which are essential for many body functions. However, under certain circumstances, the normal functions of the liver can get overloaded, especially when too much sugar is circulating in the blood. That is when the liver switches on a metabolic process called lipogenesis which synthesises fats from glucose for storage in fat cells around the body and the liver itself. Another factor which leads to NAFLD is the presence of too much dietary fats in blood. In this situation, the liver appears unable to dispose of the fats arising from lipogenesis and starts to store more fats within the liver itself. Hence, dietary factors are strongly associated with NAFLD.
A 2020 paper in the British Journal of Nutrition explored dietary influences which can cause NAFLD. Unsurprisingly, the highest correlations are diets which contain (a) high amounts of highly-processed carbohydrates (which get easily converted into sugars during digestion), (b) sugary drinks, and/or (c) excessive amounts of fats, especially from dairy or red meats. Note the above is also a textbook definition of a fast food diet.
Interestingly, the paper also listed some foods which are not linked to NAFLD, and they include nuts, grains, fish, fruits, vegetables, eggs, and legumes.
The high incidence of NAFLD and corresponding numbers of people with the condition who appear unaffected indicate it is not a debilitating condition, at least at the earlier stages. At highest risk of getting NAFLD are those with Type 2 diabetes or who are obese. Other people at risk are those with hypertension (high blood pressure), or hypertriglyceridemia, or people in families with a history of NAFLD or combinations of these factors.
NAFLD can be detected by a blood test for increased levels of the liver enzymes ‘alanine aminotransferase’ and ‘aspartate aminotransferase’, or by an abdominal ultrasound scan. The first stages of NAFLD may be indicated by symptoms such as a general feeling of tiredness and/or discomfort on the right side of the abdomen, just under the ribs. In the more severe stages, symptoms can include itchy skin, yellow skin, yellow in the whites of the eyes, swollen legs, ankles, feet or stomach, and bruising easily.
If one detects such symptoms, a medical visit is strongly recommended, along with changing the diet to exclude foods linked to NAFLD.
As an aside, foie gras is French for ‘fatty liver’ and is made by force feeding ducks around 2 kilos a day of a mash made from corn boiled in fat. This introduces an unnaturally huge amount of processed carbohydrates and fats into the ducks’ diets, causing NASH in their livers. Basically, a human fed on the same diet as these ducks will also get NASH after some time. It just happens faster in a smaller creature such as ducks.
The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.
