Chocolate… and consumer lab

I talked about these silly results before.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NootropicsDepot/comments/zv9rl3/consumerlab_report_on_chocamine/

To start, Consumer Lab is a FOR PROFIT company that makes money by companies paying them. That's right, the very companies they are supposedly ranking are the ones that are funding them. Since their structure is meant to profit, they are like any other corporation. Follow the money. The reason you don't see our stuff on there is because we don't pay them. It's the same as Lab Door. They are both for-profit companies trying to position themselves as consumer protection entities, but are actually tools of the businesses in the industry they claim to be monitoring. There's a whole history behind it that I won't get into today. However, I have not been the only one in this industry to recognize the issue these guys. This is why I have been working in the background to set up a nonprofit actually doing what these for-profit corporations pretend to be doing: objectively lab testing products and releasing the results without hindrance from the brands being tested. Moreover, you have to use valid methodologies, and set your specs and standards up intelligently. Neither Consumer Lab nor LabDoor does that. Consumer Lab ranked lion's mane a couple years back, and it was the DUMBEST round I have ever seen! They didn't even test whether is WAS LION'S MANE AT ALL!!! No identity testing. They just tested for beta-glucans, then ranked based on that. News flash, I can get pure beta-glucan made from fermented yeast, and spike that into mushroom samples. Then it would be the best mushroom in the world... that was not even a mushroom. This is happening right now. Chinese suppliers are spiking mushrooms with yeast beta-glucans to make them look higher quality. Some of the "lion's mane" that Consumer Lab ranked high we tested in our lab and found was not even lion's mane at all. It's the same shit I found out about LabDoor's Panax ginseng rankings.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/comments/5f5hgw/is_there_a_lab_that_tests_and_reports_on/dajeyfx/

Merely setting up a for-profit company, then doing some testing and rankings, doesn't a consumer watchdog make. You actually have to use your brain and validated science BEFORE you release results. Ranking products based on faulty or incorrect science is worse than not releasing results at all, which brings me right to these stupid Consumer Lab chocolate testing results...

Our Chocamine product is standardized to theobromine, not flavanols. Originally, Consumer Lab decided to rank our non-flavanol-standardized product to other flavanol-standardized products based on flavanol content. That makes literally no sense... It would be like taking our lion's mane 8:1 and testing it for erinacine-A, then ranking it for that, when our 8:1 doesn't contain/isn't standardized for erinacine-A. That's not what the product is for! Chocamine was made for a very specific purpose: to give the energy effects from cocoa, with standardized theobromine, without the calories and fat you would get in a normal cocoa powder or chocolate, while tasting good. That's it. It's specifications are 12% theobromine and 5% polyphenols. All our product also meet strict Prop 65 levels for heavy metals, which Consumer Lab showed.

Here is the heavy metals results from our Chocamine.

It's all in spec, and meets Prop 65 limits, which Consumer Lab doesn't dispute. The American Herbal Products Institute (AHPA) also sets daily limits for heavy metals.

https://www.ahpa.org/ahpa_guidance_policies

That set the limit of 4.1mcg per day for cadmium. A dose of our Chocamine contains 4.9% of that limit. That means you would need to take 20 Chocamine doses a day to hit the lower limit that the AHPA sets for issues with cadmium. Saying our product is LOADED WITH HEAVY METALS is not just hyperbole, it's downright wrong.

Here is the HP-TLC for Chocamine compared to the botanical reference material for cocoa.

You can see it is an extract of cocoa that has removed some of the bands in the raw cacao, as you would expect from a product that is removing all calories and sugar to standardize to a lower dose. It's the theobromine and phenylethylamine it is concentrating, and removing the rest.

Here is the UPLC of theobromine.

It came in at 14%, which is 140mg of theobromine per 1,000mg serving.

Here is the polyphenol assay.

The spec is 5%, and we found 6.2%. You can see on the results there 62,819ppm. That's 6.2%, so it passes spec. That's a different methodology than Consumer Lab is using to test for flavanols, though. I would have to get that method from them to replicate their data. However, our Chocamine is all within the specifications set for it. It's also an RFI product. We don't make it. RFI makes it, and we test it in our lab to ensure it meets the specs set for it, which it does. Also, it is very curious that Consumer Lab only tested cocoa supplements from us, and from Cocoavia, who is owned by Mars Candy. They specifically chose all of Mars Candy's cocoa supplements to test, and then only our Chocamine that is not standardized to the same things as Cocoavia. Odd, right? Why would they choose the products from one of the largest corporations on the planet to test, then only pick a single other product that has a completely different standardization to those from Mars? We certainly didn't pay Consumer Lab, but I would be curious if Mars Candy did... You know, to the for-profit company that has a history of improper testing methodologies who is funded by the brands they are testing.