If you open Amazon or any online retailer, you’re going to see dozens if not hundreds of cocoa powders. Many of these powders will have tens of thousands of reviews and you don’t know which one to buy. Do you go with the most reviewed one? How about the prettiest packaging? The one that claims it’s organic? The list goes on.
The answer is you can’t trust almost any of it.
Would you know by looking at the above image that Navitas is the best option of the five? If you only read the reviews and product descriptions, you’re missing the entire company’s history and business practices. Most cocoa powder companies do not know the farmers or where the cacao really comes from. They simply buy the cacao from third party vendors that often times already process the cacao for them.
Here’s some quick observations down below I’ve made when researching these companies.
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BetterBody Foods is acceptable. Their cacao just barely tests below the Prop 65 limits making them an okay option. However, BetterBody refuses to show their test results but luckily Consumer Reports disclosed it via their own tests. This immediately knocks BBF down quite a bit for being shady about their transparency.
BBF works with a Dominican non-profit medical facility which is nice. Their social responsibility is admirable. However, they still make no attempt to discuss vendors and the quality from which their products are sourced. That’s why I give BBF a yellow symbol to poorly signify my indifference to them. That indifference is enough to not gain my support.
Viva Naturals hides the backside images of their bags to avoid showing the Prop 65 warning label, so when you purchase their cacao you are unaware of the contamination until it’s at your door step. Viva Naturals just hopes you are too lazy or ignorant of Prop 65 to notice or return the package (and with nearly 20,000 reviews it’s working great). Some very unethical behavior. If you don’t know, the level of contamination that’s required for a Prop 65 level is disturbingly high, so if you see a product with it you should be very concerned.
Their story claims “your health is important to you, so it’s important to us“, meanwhile they are poisoning you with an abundance of cancer causing metals to the extent their products require a Prop 65 label. Yikes! They make zero attempt to talk about what makes their products good quality and that you aren’t supporting slave labor. Hard pass.
Anthony’s Goods tries to portray themselves as a grassroots, industry disrupting health company. Come to find out they have dangerously high levels of heavy metal contamination and just buy their products from third party vendors like everyone else and they have no connection or story to the farmers. You may as well buy dropshipped chocolate if you’re going to buy Anthony’s.
This is my pure speculation, but I imagine they are benefiting from exploited child labor, knowingly or not. Oh, and Anthony’s was sued in 2023 for not disclosing the dangerous quantities of metals in some of their products – https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/prop65/notices/2023-00731.pdf. Not very ethical.
Navitas is the best on here and yet they have the least appealing packaging. You wouldn’t know it by looking at the packaging that Navitas is one of the better companies in the cacao industry. Their product tests well below Prop 65 and they provide comprehensive background to their mission, the farmers, and how they started. The cacao is sourced from the Dominican Republic and the farmers are paid well above farm gate prices. Good job Navitas.
NuNaturals has a tagline of “helping to keep you well”, but if you research their products they do not disclose any contaminant testing. Any company that refuses to disclose metal testing is already a red flag. Furthermore, they make no attempt to discuss how their products are sourced and what makes their ingredients so special. This is usually a quick way to know a company is simply buying their products from some third party vendor and have no clue what the supply chain looks like. Not all third party vendors are bad, of course, but if health companies are trying to run an ethical business then they should proudly boast how great their suppliers are. You’ll find this never happens. Hard pass on the NuNaturals.
These are the top featured cocoa powders on Amazon so it’s no wonder people have no idea what they are buying or how dangerous it is. Most people probably don’t care either and that’s fine. But at least I’m providing the facts so you can choose to buy low quality products at your discretion. I’ll be following up with many more of these cocoa powders.
