No More Cocoa in My Coffee

I used to enjoy masking the stale flavor of day-old coffee with a scant 1/4 tsp of Hershey's dark cocoa powder. Now I'm giving it a wide berth due to the continuing reports of high levels of organic heavy metals found primarily in dark chocolate and cocoa. Well, so much for dark being healthier than milk chocolate! I really enjoyed bittersweet chocolate as well, sometimes flavored with orange, cherry or sea salt. But it's not a daily indulgence. 

Coffee, on the other hand, I drink every day but only one mug and I'd like it to taste good. It's silly for me to brew a fresh pot every day when we don't necessarily consume that much. I'll drink day-old because it hasn't been left on a drip warmer/burner. And microwaving a cup the next day doesn't burn the coffee. Yes, I've been watching YouTube videos by James Hoffman, a coffee expert who is surprisingly amusing. Although he hasn't reviewed any of the coffee we drink, he has provided useful information that even non-coffee snobs can appreciate.

But back to the cocoa in my coffee. A quarter teaspoon is equal to 0.61 grams. Online articles discount levels of lead as a danger but cadmium remains a potential health risk to kidneys, liver and bones. (My grandfather, a portrait painter, died of kidney failure and might've poisoned himself with cadmium red and yellow oils. My mother told me that he constantly licked his brush tips to a fine point. Sort of like the radium girls of last century.) The disappointing amount of flavanols in cocoa powder is not a reason to dust coffee with it. ConsumerLabs found an alarming amount of cadmium (Cd) 1-1.5 mcg per gram of cocoa powder, well above the WHO limit of 0.3 mcg per gram. So, a 1/4 tsp of cocoa powder might equate to between 0.61-0.915 mcg per dose, depending on where the cocoa was harvested. (Apparently South American cocoa has greater heavy metal levels than that grown in Africa.) Yep, time to dump this habit. 

I did go to the gym for cardio (a bit slower today and a bit sore), core and a set of pull-ups. In the locker room, I chatted briefly with a woman I hadn't seen since the Fall. She just got the all-clear to start exercising again after having had a pacemaker installed, then having a wire dislodge and having that repaired. Prior to the surgery, she was having trouble getting her heart rate past the 40s and she'd fall asleep whenever she sat down. Yikes! My heart rate only behaves like that when I'm cold and tired and haven't had anything to eat or drink... otherwise it's all over the cardio machine HR monitors, but never during my annual exam.

5 January 2023
Foggy Fatigue Thursday

Precor elliptical #1
Program 1
Time: 30 + 5 (5644)
Distance: 2.85
Cal: 317
Avg Hr: 128, 198-74

HGPU 23

Crunches 60
Piriformis/Hip/Pencil Stretch
60 Dead Bugs
15 Gentle Hip Bridge/Thrusts
Elbow Plank 60s
Quick Child’s Pose
Cat stretch 12x
Fire Hydrants 30 x 2
Bird Dogs 60s x 2
Child’s Pose / Cobra Pose
Push-Ups 25
Air Squats 25
Upper body stretch
Eye yoga