Originally Posted by MinnMan

The way CR reported it, one would think that high lead and cadmium come from one brand and not another. But the source isn't the manufacturing process - it's that cocoa plants leach heavy metals from the soil from which they are grown. Assuming that a particular "brand" sources cocoa beans from an array of places, the "bad" brands likely had recently purchased beans from places with more metals in the soil. It doesn't mean that that brand is always high in metals, or that the "good" ones (low lead, low cadmium in the CR tests) stay "good".

so it's hard to know which brand is "better". It's also hard to know whether the levels of lead and cadmium outweigh the benefits of dark chocolate. For older people, the risks are probably less than for children or for women of reproductive age..