Untangling the nest of lies, misinformation, and greenwashing spewed by Ora Cacao

March 3, 2026 Update:

The owner of this company informed us — in response to our publishing of this piece in October of 2025 — that he has taken down some of the misinformation (see screenshots in our original article below) from his site. [we have not had a moment to confirm this however]. He also shared with us (and via an update on his website) that he is now testing his products to lower thresholds of detection — using the parts per billion unit of measure — (in response to the lengthy phone conversation he and I had after this piece was published). We also have not confirmed this, however we do applaud this as a move in the right direction.

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Other Considerations

• To our knowledge the owner of this company has made no highly visible public apology (on social media, their website, or elsewhere) for the misinformation that had previously been on his company’s website for an extended period of time (again the screenshots of this misinformation are in the original article below).
  • Consequently, customers who purchased these Ora Cacao products prior to this misinformation being removed from the site may still be purchasing these products with the incorrect assumption that they are metals free.
• This company continues to market their Lead-Contaminated and Cadmium-Contaminated products as health-beneficial and also as acceptable for consumption by pregnant women.
• Continue reading below the image.

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Original Piece Published
October 14, 2025

A lot of Lead Safe Mama community members have asked me about this Ora Cacao chocolate brand, since the company’s public statements clearly state they have “No Heavy Metals.” I decided to take a bit of a deep dive today into the false statements, greenwashing, and misinformation that are so pervasive on their website and social media (in their marketing and branding). I started by watching a video of theirs and commenting on the post. You can see my comment in the screenshot below.

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Published:
October 14, 2025 Instagram Post 

@cacaoceremony has blatantly false information on at least 9 pages of their website (scroll down to see those images on the website).
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Images of those 9 pages w/ false statements will be shared in our next 9 Instagram posts (click through). Http://www.Instagram.com/LeadSafeMama
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Each flavor of their product features a graphic with the words “No Heavy Metals,” however they also have TWO places where you can look up the heavy metals lab results for their products.
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One source on their site is a graphic representation that is not dated and has lower levels than on their lab reports (as shared in our earlier Instagram post today, see the image above on the website with our pink and red annotations).
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The second source on their website is a series of eight downloadable lab reports.
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We compiled the results from those reports in the spreadsheet below.
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This is blatant false advertising, the kind that regulators often contact us about, asking for more information so they can pursue actions on behalf of consumers (and fix the problem).
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The quickest fix for @cacaoceremony would be removing all the false statements/ images from their website, and I hope this series of posts will encourage them to do so immediately.
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Additional Key Points:
1.) The product-by-product levels of Cadmium on their undated graphic representation (shared earlier) are notably lower than what they share in the specific lab reports for most of the products. For example, the lab report for Mystical Mushroom shows 511 ppb Cadmium, while their graphic summary shows 352 ppb Cadmium.
2.) Ora Cacao misrepresents their Lead test results as being “negative” when they have simply not tested to a low enough threshold of detection to determine what the actual Lead levels for the products are.
3.) The only published lab reports we could find on their website are outdated (16 months or older, see our spreadsheet). Given the variation between the lab results and the other test results Ora Cacao shares, the company is undoubtedly aware of a significant range of Cadmium levels in their products (assuming the varying levels are from another round of testing).
4.) Ora Cacao is capitalizing on “lab testing” yet not testing at frequent enough intervals, which really does not matter in the end, as their own lab tests show their products as unsafe (at least not safe enough to be consumed by children, pregnant women, and/or women of childbearing age who may want to conceive).
5.) The company’s site uses heavy greenwashing tactics to dismiss the toxicity of its products.

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Below are the nine images referenced above.

Each screenshot is of a page for the different cacao product flavors, including the image accompanying each flavor stating “No Heavy Metals” with a checkmark graphic next to it. You can see an instance of that highlighted at the top of this page.

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