Hershey’s Natural Unsweetened Cocoa Powder is a genuinely nutritious ingredient with one notable caveat: heavy metal contamination. At just 10 calories per tablespoon, it delivers 2 grams of fiber, over 2 milligrams of iron, and a concentrated dose of plant compounds linked to heart health. But Consumer Reports testing found that a single tablespoon of Hershey’s Natural Unsweetened Cocoa exceeded California’s maximum allowable dose level for lead by 25 percent, which complicates the “healthy” label.
What’s Actually in a Tablespoon
Hershey’s Natural Unsweetened Cocoa is 100% cacao with no added sugars, fats, or flavorings. One tablespoon (5 grams) contains 10 calories, 2 grams of dietary fiber, less than 1 gram of protein, and about 2 milligrams of iron. That iron content is meaningful: it covers roughly 11 percent of an adult’s daily needs from a single tablespoon, and it adds up quickly if you’re using cocoa in smoothies, oatmeal, or baking.
The fiber is also worth noting. Two grams from 5 grams of powder means cocoa is nearly 40 percent fiber by weight, which is unusually high. It has a low glycemic index and essentially no impact on blood sugar, making it compatible with ketogenic and diabetic diets as long as you’re not mixing it into something loaded with sugar.
Antioxidants: Where Cocoa Stands Out
Cocoa powder is one of the most antioxidant-dense foods you can buy, and Hershey’s Natural Unsweetened version performs well on this front. A study analyzing Hershey’s alongside 19 other cocoa powders found that natural (non-alkalized) cocoa powders contained an average of 34.6 milligrams of flavanols per gram, or about 3.5 percent flavanols by weight. That means a single tablespoon delivers roughly 173 milligrams of flavanols.
These flavanols are the compounds behind most of cocoa’s health benefits. They help blood vessels relax by boosting the body’s production of nitric oxide, a molecule that widens arteries and improves blood flow. This is the same mechanism that makes beet juice popular among athletes, though cocoa delivers it through a different class of plant compounds.
Heart Health Benefits
The cardiovascular case for cocoa is the strongest area of evidence. A Cochrane review of 20 clinical trials involving 856 participants found that flavanol-rich cocoa products lowered systolic blood pressure by about 2.8 points and diastolic blood pressure by about 2.2 points over periods of 2 to 18 weeks. Those are modest numbers, roughly what you’d get from cutting back on sodium, but they’re consistent and statistically significant across multiple studies.
The mechanism is straightforward: flavanols stimulate the lining of blood vessels to produce nitric oxide, which causes vessels to dilate. Over time, this reduces the resistance your heart has to pump against. The effect is most relevant for people with mildly elevated blood pressure, not a replacement for medication in anyone with serious hypertension, but a meaningful dietary habit.
Blood Sugar and Insulin: Less Clear
You’ll sometimes see cocoa promoted as beneficial for blood sugar control, but the clinical evidence is weak. A randomized, placebo-controlled trial gave overweight women roughly 1,200 milligrams of cocoa flavanols daily for four weeks and found no improvement in insulin resistance or glucose uptake compared to placebo. That’s a substantial dose, far more than you’d get from a tablespoon or two of cocoa in your morning coffee.
Unsweetened cocoa itself won’t spike your blood sugar, which makes it a smart swap for sugary chocolate products. But that’s different from saying it actively improves how your body handles glucose. The benefit here is what cocoa doesn’t contain (sugar, significant calories) rather than what it does.
The Heavy Metal Problem
This is the part that makes the “healthy” question complicated. Consumer Reports tested Hershey’s Natural Unsweetened Cocoa and found that a single tablespoon exposed consumers to 125 percent of California’s maximum allowable dose level for lead. That made it the second-highest cocoa powder tested, behind only Droste.
Lead and cadmium accumulate in cacao plants from contaminated soil and from lead-containing dust that settles on beans during drying. The issue isn’t unique to Hershey’s. Consumer Reports found elevated heavy metals across many chocolate products, with dark chocolate and cocoa powder generally containing more than milk chocolate. Hershey’s Special Dark, which is Dutch-processed, had the highest lead levels of any chocolate bar tested.
California’s thresholds are conservative, set at levels intended to carry no observable risk over a lifetime of daily exposure. Exceeding them by 25 percent doesn’t mean a tablespoon of cocoa will harm you today, but daily use over years adds cumulative exposure, especially concerning for children and pregnant women. If you consume cocoa regularly, this is worth factoring into your overall diet rather than ignoring.
Natural vs. Dutch-Processed
Hershey’s sells two main cocoa products: the Natural Unsweetened (in the brown container) and the Special Dark (in the dark container). This distinction matters more than most people realize. The Natural version is unprocessed cacao that retains its full flavanol content. Special Dark was originally a blend of natural and Dutch-processed cocoa but was reformulated around 2018 to be 100% Dutch-processed.
Dutch processing, or alkalization, treats cocoa with an alkaline solution to mellow its bitterness and darken its color. It produces a smoother flavor, but it strips out a large portion of the flavanols responsible for cocoa’s health benefits. If your goal is antioxidant content and cardiovascular support, Natural Unsweetened is the clear choice. Special Dark is better suited for recipes where flavor and color matter more than nutrition.
How It Compares to Premium Brands
One of the more useful findings from antioxidant research is that Hershey’s Natural Unsweetened Cocoa performs comparably to more expensive natural cocoa powders. The key variable isn’t brand or price point. It’s whether the cocoa has been alkalized. Natural cocoa powders as a group averaged 34.6 mg of flavanols per gram, regardless of whether they were budget or premium. Raw cacao powders, which are processed at lower temperatures, may retain slightly more heat-sensitive compounds, but the flavanol difference between raw cacao and conventional natural cocoa is smaller than the difference between natural and Dutch-processed.
In practical terms, Hershey’s Natural Unsweetened delivers antioxidant value on par with cocoa powders that cost two to three times as much. The more important choice is avoiding alkalized products if health benefits are your priority.
Making Cocoa Work in Your Diet
The healthiest way to use Hershey’s cocoa is to treat it as a flavor and nutrient booster in foods that don’t undermine its benefits with added sugar. A tablespoon stirred into plain Greek yogurt, blended into a smoothie with banana and spinach, or mixed into overnight oats gives you the flavanols, fiber, and iron without the sugar load of hot cocoa mix or chocolate bars. Even in baking, using unsweetened cocoa and controlling sugar separately gives you more flexibility than starting with a sweetened chocolate product.
Given the heavy metal concern, moderation is reasonable. One tablespoon a day gives you a meaningful flavanol dose without pushing lead exposure significantly above safety thresholds. Rotating cocoa brands or alternating cocoa days with non-cocoa days can further reduce cumulative exposure if that’s something you want to manage carefully.