Just Ate Carrageenan!

[gabriel79]

And why isn't cocoa butter used more? It's tasty and looks pretty awesome.

jeje... Because it's incredibly expensive??? Last time I checked cocoa butter was like 4 times more expensive than coconut oil, which is already quite expensive

 

[narouz]

And why isn't cocoa butter used more? It's tasty and looks pretty awesome.

jeje... Because it's incredibly expensive??? Last time I checked cocoa butter was like 4 times more expensive than coconut oil, which is already quite expensive

gabriel-
That wasn't me--it was the person I quoted.
But yes! Quite expensive.
I've never tried eating it.
I like to use it on my skin,
but if you buy it pure it is very hard--much harder than coconut oil,
and thus nearly impossible to use.
I guess I could melt it...but kinduv a drag.

 

[gabriel79]

Sorry! It's the problem of reading from RSS feeds, I missed some formatting

 

[narouz]

Sorry! It's the problem of reading from RSS feeds, I missed some formatting

I thought it was inadvertant, gabriel. :)
I just didn't want others to think I said that.

 

[Dutchie]

I've read on many american sites about cacao butter,but what is it? Is it just unsweetened cacao powder or butter mixed with unsweetened cacao powder or what?

 

[Jellyfish]

I've read on many american sites about cacao butter,but what is it? Is it just unsweetened cacao powder or butter mixed with unsweetened cacao powder or what?

It is fat extracted from cocoa/cacao bean.

 

[Debbie]

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
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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
Valley of the Sun Organics
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.
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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.
Additional information available:
On June 11th, 2008, Dr. Joanne Tobacman petitioned the FDA to revoke the current
regulations permitting use of carrageenan as a food additive.
On June 11th, 2012 the FDA denied her petition, categorically addressing and
ultimately dismissing all of her claims; their rebuttal supported by the results of
several in-depth, scientific studies. If you would like to read the full petition and FDA
response, they can be accessed at
http://www.regulations.gov/#!searchResu ... 008-P-0347

 

[j.]

Debbie, you talk like the FDA is a credible organization.

 

[narouz]

I'm gonna whip up a giant Carrageenan Milkshake!
j., you're gonna live!

 

[Wilfrid]

Hi everyone,

Regarding the post I made on cocoa butter here and on Matt Stone's blog, I sent the same info to RP.
And here is reply: " Thanks. That's very important information".
But...I think that we all must agree that despite the ingested PUFA from cocoa butter the most important thing is that chocolate still have health benefits and we have no reason to avoid it.
The problem with ingested fat is, I think, that we are looking of fat's profile before the action of the human lipase and not considering the result after human digestive process which seems far more complicated than most of us think it is.

 

[gretchen]

Ben and Jerry's contains carageenan. WHY?

 

[j.]

Ben and Jerry's contains carageenan. WHY?

Cause most people haven't ever heard the word carrageenan, let alone know that in its degraded it produces cancer.

If you were thinking the FDA would protect people from this kind of thing, the FDA is probably just an arm of the PR departments of big food industries.

 

[ken]

So I was thinking again about carrageenan and did some web searches trying to see if there was any new science. I didn't find any but did follow a long thread on an obscure vegan site. Almost three hundred comments after the post raising concerns about it. Way down toward the end was a post very similar to Debbie's on this thread. Probably pasted from the same source. Someone on the other board called out the poster as someone from the Carrageenan Manufacturers association science advisory staff. When I checked Debbie"s profile she had just signed up and made only that post.

 

[narouz]

 

[kiran]

Ya, that post has been posted at a bunch of places on the web. Looks like someone has a google alert for carrageenan and just posts that manifesto.

 

[charlie]

After checking into Debbie's IP address. It's a very suspicious one which I do not want to go into further detail here in public. Very good catch, Ken. Thank you.

 

[coffeerc]

For a pretty good look at toxicity of carageenan, search at Cornucopia.com find dropdown section "articles" read "carageenan" and also read "the white papers" in same "articles" dropdown.

Your section here, about carrageenan was the final enticement for me to join you. I have other good articles about it but don't know how to copy http addresses here or anywhere for that matter. One particular annoying site has games for kids, encourages college kids to buy it, I suppose they are inducting kids(like Camal cigarettes induction for kids), bleh! There is a drawing of the chemical stucture and it looks gross and sticky just like it feels in your mouth and gut.

The White Papers = a long read but worth it. Perhaps you've already read this? Forgive my newness.

Sorry about my lack of computor skills, yours is the first place/forum I've enjoyed so much that I wanted to join.
I mostly "computor" for my own curiousity, enjoy biology or other challanging subjects.

Also my internet sometimes times out(rural here)if it seems my musings are incomplete,perhaps they are...

 

[j.]

I think you meant cornucopia.org. They have a guide of products with and without carrageenan, such as chocolate milk, cheeses.

 

[coffeerc]

Thank you, yes...have you read the white paper?

 

[j.]

I didn't find it.