The Hong Kong Consumer Council published the latest edition of its monthly magazine “Choice,” on Oct. 16, which includes one item on chocolates. It shows that heavy metal, cadmium, was detected in all 29 chocolate samples, with one of them even exceeding the European Union’s regulatory limit. A number of the samples were also found to contain lead, cadmium, and traces of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) that can cause cancer. The same tests also found that the average sugar content of milk chocolates is 90 percent higher than that of dark chocolates.
The 29 chocolate samples evaluated this time included 20 “dark” (cocoa-biased) chocolates and nine “white” (milk-biased) ones. The prices of the former samples range from HK$28.80 to HK$160 (US$3.7 to 20.5) a pack. Except for one that has no weight label, the average selling price of the rest ranges from HK$2.9 to HK$32 (US$0.4 to 4) per 10 grams, a difference of about ten times. Among them, the dark chocolate sample with the lowest price received an overall score of 5 points from the Consumer Council, while the highest-priced one got just 2, an indication that there is no inherent relationship between price and product quality.
