Could This “Natural” Food Ingredient Be Harming Your Health?
A report from the Cornucopia Institute warns that a natural but unnecessary food additive used in conventional as well as some organic foods and drinks could be fueling more than 100 medical conditions, including cancer and digestive disorders. The culprit is carrageenan, a seaweed-derived compound used in products to provide a better “mouthfeel” and to keep ingredients in suspension.
What products contain carrageenan?
As carrageenan is a natural thickener or emulsifier, it is commonly used in a broad spectrum of dairy products including yogurt, sour cream and chocolate milk, along with ice cream and creamers. The compound is also used in dairy alternatives like soymilk, almond milk and coconut milk. Other products containing carrageenan include toothpaste and beer, in addition to juices and jelly based foods.
Aside from imparting a creamier texture, carrageenan prevents the separation of the ingredients of a product, preventing the need to shake it before use. Mark Kastel of the Cornucopia Institute asserts most mothers would not mind shaking a container to avoid using a product containing an ingredient that could harm their child’s health. He points out that shaking or stirring products before use is a minor inconvenience to ensure your family is receiving a natural and pure product.
How is carrageenan harmful to health?
Carrageenan’s detrimental effects stem from the fact that it causes inflammation within the body. This effect is so consistent that researchers use this compound to induce inflammation in scientific experiments, according to Joanne Tobacman, MD, a researcher at the University of Illinois College of Medicine. Tobacman has explained to the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) that both this compound and its breakdown product produce dangerous inflammation, which is the foundation of more than 100 illnesses, including rheumatoid arthritis, atherosclerosis and inflammatory bowel disease.[
Additionally, carrageenan potently feeds other life-threatening conditions like cancer. Regular consumption of the compound is strongly linked to different types of gastrointestinal cancers in rats.
Why is carrageenan permitted in organic products?
You would expect carrageenan to be rampantly used in nonorganic foods and drinks, as it indeed is, but it is distressing to know it is permitted in organic ones, too. While foods designated as being organic have the advantages of being grown without toxic chemicals, hormones and antibiotics, sometimes detrimental substances are included in the NOSB’s list of approved ingredients.
Why is it that this board, which should be dedicated to the purity of organic food, approves the use of carrageenan in organic products? The answer lies in corporate interests who appear to deem profitability more valuable than purity and product integrity.
How so? The organic food industry has become so enormously lucrative that large traditional food manufactures, such as Kellogg, PepsiCo and General Mills, have bought out most of the nation’s organic food companies. Major corporations such as these now dominate the NOSB, the board that sets the standards for organic products. The influence of these corporate interests on the board has been rather corrupting, demonstrated in a recent meeting of NOSB, where the members voted 10 to 5 to retain carrageenan on the expanding list of questionable ingredients that can be used in products having the “certified organic” label.
How do you avoid carrageenan?
Be diligent about reading labels or select one of the organic carrageenan-free products from this working list provided by the Cornicopia Institute.
Chocolate Milk
- Castle Rock Organic Farms
- Crystal Ball Farms
- Strafford Organic Creamery
- Trickling Springs Creamery
Cottage Cheese
- Nancy’s
- Organic Valley
Cream
- Organic Valley (pasteurized only…ultrapasteurized contains carrageenan)
- Butterworks Farm
- Strauss Family Creamery
Ice Cream
- Stonyfield
- Green & Black’s Organic
- Julie’s (except mint fudge, mocha fudge and peanut butter fudge)
- Alden’s
Yogurt
- Seven Stars
- Stonyfield (all brands except caramel Oikos and Squeezers)
- Horizon (all except Tuberz)
- Wallaby
Soymilk
- EdenSoy
- Westsoy
Sources:
http://www.rodale.com/carrageenan
http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/07/five-weirdest-ingredients-allowed-organic-food
http://www.cornucopia.org/shopping-guide-to-avoiding-organic-foods-with-carrageenan/
Mary West is a natural health enthusiast, as she believes this area can profoundly enhance wellness. She is the creator of a natural healing website where she focuses on solutions to health problems that work without side effects. You can visit her site and learn more at http://www.alternativemedicinetruth.com. Ms. West is also the author of Fight Cancer Through Powerful Natural Strategies.
Article updated on: February 13th, 2013
Why eat them if they are toxic
very important health info
I know that Kellogs is sold here but I will not purchase any of their products. I have not done it for years. I used to love chocolate milk but I do not even purchase it anymore.
SO MUCH FOR THE MYTHS CONSIDER THE FACTS ON CARRAGEENAN FOR A CHANGE
Q. What is Carrageenan??
A. Carrageenan is a naturally-occurring seaweed extract. It is widely used in foods and non-foods to improve texture and stability. Common uses include meat and poultry, dairy products, canned pet food, cosmetics and toothpaste.
Q. Why the controversy?
A. Self-appointed consumer watchdogs have produced numerous web pages filled with words condemning carrageenan as an unsafe food additive for human consumption. However, in 70+ years of carrageenan being used in processed foods, not a single substantiated claim of an acute or chronic disease has been reported as arising from carrageenan consumption. On a more science-based footing, food regulatory agencies in the US, the EU, and in the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization/World Health Organization (FAO/WHO) repeatedly review and continue to approve carrageenan as a safe food additive.
Q. What has led up to this misrepresentation of the safety of an important food stabilizer, gelling agent and thickener?
A. It clearly has to be attributed to the research of Dr. Joanne Tobacman, an Associate Prof at the University of Illinois in Chicago. She and a group of molecular biologists have accused carrageenan of being a potential inflammatory agent as a conclusion from laboratory experiments with cells of the digestive tract. It requires a lot of unproven assumptions to even suggest that consumption of carrageenan in the human diet causes inflammatory diseases of the digestive tract. The objectivity of the Chicago research is also flawed by the fact that Dr Tobacman has tried to have carrageenan declared an unsafe food additive on weak technical arguments that she broadcast widely a decade before the University of Chicago research began.
Q. What brings poligeenan into a discussion of carrageenan?
A. Poligeenan (“degraded carrageenan” in pre-1988 scientific and regulatory publications) is a possible carcinogen to humans; carrageenan is not. The only relationship between carrageenan and poligeenan is that the former is the starting material to make the latter. Poligeenan is not a component of carrageenan and cannot be produced in the digestive tract from carrageenan-containing foods.
Q. What are the differences between poligeenan and carrageenan?
A. The production process for poligeenan requires treating carrageenan with strong acid at high temp (about that of boiling water) for 6 hours or more. These severe processing conditions convert the long chains of carrageenan to much shorter ones: ten to one hundred times shorter. In scientific terms the molecular weight of poligeenan is 10,000 to 20,000; whereas that of carrageenan is 200,000 to 800,000. Concern has been raised about the amount of material in carrageenan with molecular weight less than 50,000. The actual amount (well under 1%) cannot even be detected accurately with current technology. Certainly it presents no threat to human health.
Q. What is the importance of these molecular weight differences?
A. Poligeenan contains a fraction of material low enough in molecular weight that it can penetrate the walls of the digestive tract and enter the blood stream. The molecular weight of carrageenan is high enough that this penetration is impossible. Animal feeding studies starting in the 1960s have demonstrated that once the low molecular weight fraction of poligeenan enters the blood stream in large enough amounts, pre-cancerous lesions begin to form. These lesions are not observed in animals fed with a food containing carrageenan.
Q. Does carrageenan get absorbed in the digestive track?
A. Carrageenan passes through the digestive system intact, much like food fiber. In fact, carrageenan is a combination of soluble and insoluble nutritional fiber, though its use level in foods is so low as not to be a significant source of fiber in the diet.
Summary
Carrageenan has been proven completely safe for consumption. Poligeenan is not a component of carrageenan.
Closing Remarks
The consumer watchdogs with their blogs and websites would do far more service to consumers by researching their sources and present only what can be substantiated by good science. Unfortunately we are in an era of media frenzy that rewards controversy.
This post is so full of half-truths and outright misstatements as to cause serious misgivings as to its motivation. Follows an essay i’ve been putting together on carrageenan, initially addressed to the maker of an almond milk preparation I have stopped using.
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Your company line is wrong regarding carrageenan (CGN), and Dr. Tobacman’s research, on several counts.
The first and most pressing issue is the molecular weight of CGN used in her research. “The controversy on Carrageenan is based on an article by a Dr. Tobacman who used degraded Carrageenan in her studies (molecular weight of less than 30, 000).”
Here I quote from Dr. Tobacman’s statement, April, 2012, to NOSB:
http://www.cornucopia.org/DrTobacmanComment_toNOSB.pdf
In experiments with human colonic cells in my laboratory, we have used small
amounts of high molecular weight (undegraded or food grade) carrageenan and have
determined the specific molecular mechanisms by which carrageenan causes
inflammation.
and
The work in my laboratory has used high molecular weight carrageenan in almost
all of our experiments.
Note that the first quote references direct introduction of undegraded CGN to cell cultures, bypassing digestion.
The summarized results:
There are three major pathways by which carrageenan causes
inflammation, including stimulation of an innate immune pathway. This pathway is also
activated by pathogenic bacteria, such as Salmonella, and is stimulated due to the
unusual chemical structure of carrageenan. Stimulation of this pathway is no accident;
it is a direct result of the unusual chemical structure of carrageenan, and stimulation of
this pathway has features that can lead to prolonged inflammatory effects. Also, the
effects of carrageenan-induced inflammation are not limited to the intestine, and when
laboratory mice are exposed to low concentrations of carrageenan in their water for 18
days, they develop profound glucose intolerance and impaired insulin action. These
responses are precursors of diabetes, which is associated with activation of the innate
immune pathway that carrageenan stimulates.
I will leave it up to you to verify just how low the dosage is in relation to NA daily dose. Dr. Tobacman estimates it to be about one fiftieth.
Note as well the interaction with harmful GIT flora.
Dr. Tobacman further has this to say regarding the stability of high molecular weight CGN:
“Acid hydrolysis (digestion) leads to shortening
of the carrageenan polymer to the degraded form,
poligeenan. It is not unreasonable to speculate
that normal gastric acid…may act upon ingested
carrageenan and convert some of which is ingested
to the lower molecular weight poligeenan during
the actual process of digestion. Also, some
intestinal bacteria possess the enzyme
carrageenase that degrades carrageenan.”
Tobacman’s 2002 publication (4) proves her earlier
hypothesis. She writes:
“Mild-acid hydrolytic depolymerization of
carrageenan affords poligeenan, a mixture of
lower molecular weight polysaccharides and
oligosaccharide products.”
Nor is Dr Tobacman the only holder of this opinion. This from a letter to Lancet by Marcus and Watt:
“In August, 1972, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
imposed restrictions on the use of degraded carrageenan as a drug or food additive. However,
undegraded carrageenan, which must undergo degradation during passage through the
gastrointestinal tract (since it is absorbed and absorption of such a high molecular weight
material without degradation is inconceivable), is still incorporated into a wide variety of foods
as a stabilizer.”
In other words, initially non-degraded CGN is unlikely to survive digestion.
Futher contibutions to Lancet, regarding CGN:
Much of the Lancet debate in 1970-71 focused on two related issues: first,
whether carrageenan could be used to create an experimental model for human ulcerative colitis
and second, whether carrageenan posed a threat to humans. But by the time of Marcus and Watt’s
letter in 1980, not only has the experimental model been accepted, but carrageenan has been
implicated in additional illnesses: “Besides ulcerative disease of the colon, associated lesions
such as squamous metaplasia…have also been seen in animals fed degraded or undegraded
carrageenan long term…What is disturbing – yet not unexpected – is reports that in rats
undegraded carrageenan fed in the diet enhances colorectal carcinogenesis
So there are two inescapable conclusions regarding CGN.
First, even in undegraded, high molecular weight configurations, CGN is a virulent source of inflammation, linked to ulcerative colitis and colorectal cancer. And the inflammation itself is of course recently recognized as one of the most severe threats to human health, linked to over 100 diseases including rheumatoid arthritis, atherosclerosis, and cancer generally. And Dr. Tobacman’s findings as to the severe and immediate effects, in trace quantities, on glucose intolerance and Type II diabetes are equally frightening.
And second, even if ingested in undegraded form, CGN is unlikely to survive digestion. Rather it will, to some extent at least, degrade to shorter-chain molecules that are universally regarded as more dangerous than the undegraded form.
And yet, despite this alarming research evidence, you attempt to reassure me regarding the widespread regulatory acceptance of CGN. This is a curious dichotomy that requires further investigation.
In this excellent, and even-handed essay:
http://www.beyondpesticides.org/organicfood/action/spring2012/Carrageenan/MWolfson.Carrageenan.pdf
Ms. Wolfson details, among many other things the evolution (devolution?) of regulatory standards regarding food additives:
The Delaney Clause was part of the 1958 Food Additives
Amendment; it ruled that any substance found to cause cancer in a laboratory animal (at any
dosage, even the most miniscule) must be excluded from the food supply. This zero-tolerance
policy emerged at a particular moment in the history of American cancerphobia and cancer
consciousness. As Jean-Paul Gaudillière has written, “the postwar status of cancer was deeply
shaped by the image of the ‘invulnerable man,’ fighting disease with science,” and perhaps, with
draconian regulation (de jure, if not de facto).16
If the 1958 Amendment had been followed to the letter, we would obviously not find
carrageenan – or many other additives – on the ingredients lists of processed foods.
Fifty years have now passed since the Delaney ruling, and the consensus among experts on Food and Drug
Law is that it has been rendered largely ineffective by subsequent, “softer” amendments. The
most important of these was the creation of the “GRAS List.” “GRAS” (“Generally Recognized
as Safe”) substances were excluded from the definition of “food additive” as defined in the 1958
Food Additives Amendment. As reported by the FDA’s Office of Food Safety, “Congress
recognized that many substances intentionally used in a manner whereby they are added to food
would not require a formal premarket review by FDA to assure their safety, either because their
safety had been established by a long history of use in food or by virtue of the nature of the
substances…” Congress also “exclude[ed] from the definition of ‘food additive’ substances that
are generally recognized, among experts qualified by scientific training and experience to
evaluate their safety (‘qualified experts’) as having been adequately shown through scientific
procedures (or, in the case of a substance used in food prior to January 1, 1958, through either
scientific procedures or through experience based on common use in food) to be safe under the
conditions of their intended use.”
Thus, while the Delaney Clause itself expressed “zero tolerance” for carcinogenic
substances, the GRAS designation, and especially its application to pre-1958 additives, actually
enacted a de-facto policy of “innocent until proven guilty.” Having been used in processed foods
for at least two decades prior to 1958, carrageenan easily landed on the GRAS list – a
designation it maintains today.
So your comforting statement as to: “”ADI not Specified” which is the safest classification” in this light is revealed to be a simple abdication on the part of your “panel of experts”. Regulatory bodies are simply refusing to specify with CGN, as it is ‘grandfathered in’. Nonetheless, they have been forced to specify, haven’t they? They have specified that it is unsafe for infants. A ‘black box’ warning you repeat on your packaging. And CGN is certainly bloody damned unsafe for hamsters, and rats. And yet, obstinately, no conclusion is drawn for the general population. This is obviously simple inertia, nothing grander.
What is the source of this inertia; this abdication on the part of regulatory bodies in general, and NOSB in particular?
This essay:
http://www.cornucopia.org/USDA/OrganicWatergateWhitePaper.pdf
details the insidious co-option of the NOSB by commercial interests. Recall that the NOSB was originally designed to be of the following composition:
According to the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990, sec. 2119, the NOSB “shall
be composed of 15 members, of which –
(1)four shall be individuals who own or operate an organic farming operation;
(2)two shall be individuals who own or operate an organic handling operation;
(3) one shall be an individual who owns or operates a retail establishment with
significant trade in organic products;
(4)three shall be individuals with expertise in areas of environmental protection
and resource conservation;
(5)three shall be individuals who represent public interest or consumer interest
groups; 6
(6) one shall be an individual with expertise in the fields of toxicology, ecology or
biochemistry, and;
(7) one shall be an individual who is a certifying agent as identified under
section 2116”
This structure has been methodically corrupted, with the complicity of the USFDA, through appointments of individuals with connections to big agribusiness and food processing. Abundant examples are presented in the essay. And this corrupted board repeatedly overturns sunset initiatives regarding CGN, not because it is GRAS, and not because it is essential, but merely because it is currently convenient to these interests.
It is most disappointing how closely these big food interests seem to align with those of *** Company.
_______________________________________
Note especially, in the above, that CGN has not “been proven completely safe for consumption.” It HAS NEVER BEEN RIGOROUSLY EXAMINED, having instead been ‘granfathered in’.
As a ‘word freak’ I am amused by the ‘drift’ in their meanings, through time. The effects upon words like ‘terrific’ and ‘gay’ are widely known. I hereby submit another neology:
SKEPTIC: one who, with condescending, bovine complacency, regurgitates the newsspeak of USF alphabet organizations.
This issue goes well beyond CGN. The corruption of the NOSB is an issue we all must closely watch, and actively resist.
Meanwhile, read your labels, pilgrims.
Sir, I really enjoy reading intelligent comments, yours included. However, you failed to point out any benefit it has in regard to nutrition. Also, no mention of whether you are representing a food company or if you’re independent from them. Would appreciate a response.
This is mind blowing. I have something like RA, or Lupus-undiagnosed as yet, due to indecision of Dr. I have done everything I can to reduce inflammation in my body which drs. say is all over inside me. I am still very ill; lots of bone & joint pain, migraines, aching muscles too, weak, no stamina, no energy ie. I mean NONE! Difficulty sleeping, difficulty remaining asleep, then needing daytime sleep often. Cannot walk far, cannot stand for long, cannot do simple chores (fasten bra, load dishwasher without a rest interval each 5 minutes, and so on. There are many more cannot do’s in my life. Meds cannot be taken before driving, plus, I have memory problems 24/7. (Just for facts, but that can be a problem!) I do have a quick response in the driving lane.
gee, have you tried to contact a naturopathic doctor for your health problem? I would. Have you thought of letting food be your medicne first? Would you like to? I would be glad to guide and support you as you discover what foods and lifestyle are best for you. Check out my webiste as http://www.mynaturalhealingability.com and see if what I offer could be of help to you.