Lindt Reveals That Its Chocolate Isn't Actually 'Expertly Crafted' At All

In an attempt to end a 2023 lawsuit about the presence of heavy metals in its dark chocolate, Lindt has confessed its branding as a premium chocolate company was all bogus. A February 2023 class action lawsuit called the chocolatier into question after Consumer Reports released a test that spotted lead and cadmium in two Lindt dark chocolate bars. In response to the lawsuit, Lindt & Sprungli — a Swiss chocolatier — is backpedaling on its own marketing, which highlighted the chocolate's "excellence" and its "expertly crafted" status.

Despite its gold-lettered packaging and commercials with ribbons of melted chocolate cascading from a whisk, Lindt's lawyers claimed its premium marketing was "puffery," or intentionally exaggerated claims, to call for an end to the class action. The court dismissed Lindt's motion, defining "puffery" as "exaggerated advertising, blustering, and boasting upon which no reasonable buyer would rely," according to Fortune.

The consumers behind the class action lawsuit — a group of residents from Alabama, California, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, and New York — claimed that the chocolatier's marketing deceived them into paying higher prices for what they believed to be high-quality and safe dark chocolate. 

Spotting metals like lead and cadmium is not uncommon in dark chocolate bars from popular brands, but high concentrations of these metals in consumers' bodies have been connected to cancer and other health problems. Lead and cadmium are found in the soil in which cacao beans grow, which explains why the dark chocolate bars produced from those cacao beans contain the metals. Though consuming high concentrations of heavy metals can be harmful to your body, eating dark chocolate is, for the most part, still safe in moderation, according to Health Canada (via CBC). 

This isn't the first time a Lindt brand has been under fire for consumer deception. In 2019. Russell Stover's and Ghirardelli, both owned by Lindt & Sprungli, were fined $750,000 for deceiving customers with oversized packaging. We ranked Lindt as the best milk chocolate bar, and, luckily, its milk chocolate has not been shown to have high levels of heavy metals thus far.