Just Ate Carrageenan!

[jaa]

I haven't noticed any issues with digestion. Adding seaweed to the broth and filtering it seems a lot easier than adding it after the fact. Thanks for the advice!

 

[Kelly]

I always wonder about stuff like this. Like, heavy whipping cream lists carrageenan as an ingredient. But half and half just lists cream and milk. I wonder if carrageenan is in the cream the half and half uses but doesn't need to be listed?

I've found that mainstream "whipping cream" brands have carageenan and
gums, but that natural or organic ones do not. I believe it is there to assist
in making whipped cream, so I would assume there is no reason for them to
add it to half & half.

- Scott

Interesting, thanks for the info.

 

[j.]

Why don't you just make your own chocolate milk? as I figured it'll probably must be easy?.....take some milk,put in some cacopowder and sugar/honey or whatever to sweeten it?

I do that every day. But this time I was out of the house longer than expected and wanted to drink something.

 

[kiran]

I always wonder about stuff like this. Like, heavy whipping cream lists carrageenan as an ingredient. But half and half just lists cream and milk. I wonder if carrageenan is in the cream the half and half uses but doesn't need to be listed?

I've found that mainstream "whipping cream" brands have carageenan and
gums, but that natural or organic ones do not. I believe it is there to assist
in making whipped cream, so I would assume there is no reason for them to
add it to half & half.

- Scott

I've heard that it's to give the cream a longer shelf life. Perhaps half-and-half generally gets used up pretty quickly.

 

[narouz]

Why don't you just make your own chocolate milk? as I figured it'll probably must be easy?.....take some milk,put in some cacopowder and sugar/honey or whatever to sweeten it?

I do that every day. But this time I was out of the house longer than expected and wanted to drink something.

j.-
At least you didn't drink this (from Wiki):

In parts of Scotland (where it is known as (An) Cairgean in Scottish Gaelic) and Ireland (variety used is Chondrus Crispus known in Irish Gaelic variously as carraigín [little rock], fiadháin [wild stuff], clúimhín cait [cat's puff], mathair an duilisg [mother of seaweeds], ceann donn [red head]), it is known as Carrageen Moss it is boiled in milk and strained, before sugar and other flavourings such as vanilla, cinnamon, brandy, or whisky are added. The end-product is a kind of jelly similar to pannacotta, tapioca, or blancmange.

You know, whenever I get a notice for this thread, I think:
I want a T-Shirt with that on it:
"F**k! I Just Ate Carrageenan!"

 

[kettlebell]

I used to drink 3 of these a day:

Frijj Milkshake

Ingredients
Skimmed Milk (68%), Whole milk (22%), Sugar, Fat Reduced Cocoa Powder, Buttermilk Powder, Modified Maize Starch, Stabilisers (Carrageenan, Guar Gum)

 

[charlie]

You know, whenever I get a notice for this thread, I think:
I want a T-Shirt with that on it:
"F**k! I Just Ate Carrageenan!"

 

[Dutchie]

I was wondering,since most of you here are big on avoiding PUFA (except for eggs?) why you use cacao?as I understood it converts in the body as PUFA too...

 

[narouz]

I used to drink 3 of these a day:

Frijj Milkshake

Ingredients
Skimmed Milk (68%), Whole milk (22%), Sugar, Fat Reduced Cocoa Powder, Buttermilk Powder, Modified Maize Starch, Stabilisers (Carrageenan, Guar Gum)

j.-
This leads me to believe your prognosis is encouraging.

 

[j.]

Haha, I think the effects are probably gone by now. Now I just want a cut of the profits from those shirts you are going to sell...

 

[kiran]

I was wondering,since most of you here are big on avoiding PUFA (except for eggs?) why you use cacao?as I understood it converts in the body as PUFA too...

Never heard of it, where did you find that? You got a link?

 

[Dutchie]

I was wondering,since most of you here are big on avoiding PUFA (except for eggs?) why you use cacao?as I understood it converts in the body as PUFA too...

Never heard of it, where did you find that? You got a link?

There was some mumbo jumbo scientific talk about it a while ago at a thread on 180Degrees:

"Wilfried January 11, 2013

Hi everyone,

Just want to add my opinion here regarding palm oil.
Even if palm oil is 50% saturated fat, like pork fat, there is a biological subtlety linked to the distrubition of fatty acids in the 1,2 and 3 positions of the glycerol.
The biodisponibility of a fatty acid is maximal when this one is linked to the position 2 of the glycerol.
In Palm oil, like cocoa butter for example, the unsaturated fatty acids are in the bioavailable position (position 2) whereas, for example, satured fatty acids occupy that position in lard.
Palm oil as to be considered like an oil which is rich of unsaturated fatty acids like cocoa butter and not like a source of saturated fatty acids because, when ingested and after digestion, palm oil’s saturated fatty acids are mostly evacuated via the bowel due to their position (1 and 3) of the glycerol and their non utilisation by the body.
And pork fat as to be considered like saturated fat when digested.

Source: http://lipidlibrary.aocs.org/lipids/tag1/index.htm
Reply
Wilfried January 11, 2013

And so, chocolate is not a source of saturated fat, like we think it is, but a source of unsaturated fat….
But I still love eating chocolate.
"

Everyone on sites/forums like these talk so much deep scientific stuff/vocabulary,that I'd think most regular doctors never even pronounced!

 

[j.]

OK, so despite the fact that cocoa butter is 5% PUFA, at most, one should consider it predominantly a source of PUFA? Never heard RP mention that. I think he spoke positively of cocoa butter.

 

[charlie]

Does this mean dark chocolate is bad?

 

[jaa]

Or bacon is good?

 

[narouz]

Well, for one thing:
How much cocoa butter is in cocoa powder?

 

[narouz]

(I imagine we may need a new thread...wherefore art thou, carrageenan!?)
Just for starters, from this website:

http://www.allchocolate.com/health/nutrition/fats.aspx

Cocoa Butter: A Natural Fat
Cholesterol-Neutral

Despite chocolate's saturated fat content, studies show that eating chocolate has no effect on the level of potentially harmful cholesterol in your blood.

Why? Because not all saturated fats are created equal. The fat in chocolate comes from cocoa butter, the natural fat found in cocoa beans. (Milk chocolate has additional fat from milk.)

About 36% of the fat in the cocoa bean is "good fat" — either mono- or polyunsaturated fat, of which, oleic acid (the fatty acid also abundant in olive oil) makes up the largest proportion. Of the saturated fat content in cocoa butter, over half comes from stearic acid. Stearic acid has been shown in numerous studies to have a neutral impact on blood cholesterol.

Why? The main reason may be that stearic acid converts from a saturated fat to an unsaturated fat when metabolized in the body. Studies have been conducted where participants fed chocolate daily for two weeks showed no change in blood cholesterol when total calories in the diet were kept the same.

In this chart, you can see that more than half of the saturated fat in cocoa butter is stearic acid, which is cholesterol neutral, and another one-third is mono- or polyunsaturated fat, which can reduce cholesterol levels.

I think I've heard Peat say that stearic acid was okay.
I don't remember him ever saying it converted to polyunsaturated fats in the body.
In fact, I've never heard of the kind of internal conversion at all.
Of course, on the website above, all good and bad is inverted for us Peatians--PUFA=good, etc.

 

[j.]

I was trying to look up Ray Peat quotes on this. This is the only one I found

Recently, it was found that the cardiac necrosis caused by unsaturated fats (linolenic acid, in particular) could be prevented by a cocoa butter supplement.

 

[narouz]

This is an interesting chart.
Compare cocoa butter to coconut oil.

from:http://paleohacks.com/questions/56136/why-dont-people-eat-more-cocoa-butter

I was thinking about making my own chocolate and was looking into cocoa butter. It looks ok, and it smells delicious. Why don't people eat more of it/cook with it?

Here's a comparison vs coconut of differences I could find (from http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fats-and-oils/508/2 http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fats-and-oils/570/2):

cocoa butter:
cals per 218g: 1927
130g saturated
Monounsaturated Fat 71.7g
Polyunsaturated Fat 6.5g
*Total Omega-3 fatty acids 218mg
Total Omega-6 fatty acids 6104mg
*Vitamin E (Alpha Tocopherol) 3.9mg 20%
*Vitamin K 53.9mcg 67%
Phytosterols 438mg
Theobromine 0.0mg (I didn't know this, guess it's only in the cocoa powder)

coconut oil:
cals per 218g: 1879
189g saturated
Monounsaturated Fat 12.6g
Polyunsaturated Fat 3.9g
Total Omega-6 fatty acids 3923mg (no O-3s)
Vitamin E (Alpha Tocopherol) 0.2mg 1%
Vitamin K 1.1 mcg 1%
Iron 0.1mg 0%
Phytosterols 187mg

butter (couldn't find info on ghee or grass-fed/raw versions):
in 184g of pure butterfat, 117g saturated
Monounsaturated Fat 47.7g
Polyunsaturated Fat 6.9g
Total Omega-3 fatty acids 715mg
Total Omega-6 fatty acids 6193mg
Vitamin A 5673IU 113%
Vitamin E (Alpha Tocopherol) 5.3mg 26%
Vitamin K 15.9mcg 20%
Folate 6.8mcg 2%
Choline 42.7mg
+buncha minerals the others don't have (?)

It doesn't look too far off from butter to me, has more vitK, and even less PUFA than butter, but less vitA and much less O3. But I'm also confused that coconut oil has no O3?

Anyway this is just from a quick look through nutritiondata. Why is coconut oil so popular despite the Omega-6s (is it the MCTs and low amt of O6 compared to others?) And why isn't cocoa butter used more? It's tasty and looks pretty awesome.

 

[narouz]

And we've been focusing on cocoa butter,
which is not what most of us have much of a dietary interest in.
Check out some basics of the chocolate making process from Wiki,
and note how cocoa butter and cocoa solids are separated.
Cocoa solids becomes cocoa powder.

Composition and extraction

Cocoa butter contains a high proportion of saturated fats, derived from stearic and palmitic acids.[2][3][4] Cocoa butter, unlike cocoa solids, has no more than trace amounts of caffeine and theobromine.[5]
The main constituent of cocoa butter is the triglyceride (fat) derived from palmitic acid, stearic acid, and oleic acids.

Cocoa butter is obtained from whole cacao beans, which are fermented, roasted, and then separated from their hulls. About 54–58% of the residue is cocoa butter. Chocolate liquor is pressed to separate the cocoa butter from the cocoa solids.[6] The Broma process is used to extract cocoa butter from ground cacao beans. Cocoa butter is usually deodorized to remove its strong and undesirable taste.[7]

The Broma process is a method used to remove cocoa butter from cocoa mass, leaving cocoa solids (cocoa powder). In about 1865 someone at the Domingo Ghirardelli factory discovered that by hanging a bag of cocoa mass (ground cacao beans) in a warm room, the cocoa butter would drip off, leaving behind a residue that can then be processed into cocoa powder.

More cocoa butter (fat) is extracted by using the Broma process than using a hydraulic press, and less fat remaining in the cocoa (powder) makes it easier to dissolve the cocoa into liquids. Broma process cocoa also has a more intense flavor than Dutch process cocoa, as no alkalis are added to the cocoa.