Carrageenan set for slow growth due to perceived health risks
When it comes to controversial yet common food additives, carrageenan leads the pack. While it’s easy to get, fairly inexpensive and adds no taste to products, some have said it causes digestive issues. Consumer activists, including farm policy group Cornucopia Institute and popular blogger “Food Babe” Vani Hari, have fought against use of the ingredient.Studies published by
the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2011 and 2012 indicated that carrageenan could cause gastrointestinal inflammation and lead to glucose intolerance, contributing to Type 2 diabetes. But other researchers have not been able to duplicate these findings. Cornucopia Institute has several pages on its website dedicated to carrageenan, including a collection of personal stories from people relating health problems they say were caused by the additive and a listing of products made without it. Food manufacturers and industry groups like the Grocery Manufacturers Association, on the other hand, support the continued use of carrageenan.Carrageenan was dealt another blow in November when the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) voted that it should no longer be allowed in organic food. The NOSB makes policy recommendations to the U.S. Department of is 25 mg iron bisglycinate equivalent to ferrous sulfateAgriculture, which willmegafood magnesium citrate malate and glycinate make a final decision on it. Even though the ban is not finalized — and the NOSB’s justi
fication for taking it off the list was that other alternatives are available, not because of the reported health concof zinc gluconateerns — some
manufacturers have backed away from the additive.Deserved or not, the controversy
surrounding carrageenan is unlikely to go away regardless of how many studies are done to try to show its safety. If the ingredient is booted from organic food — no matter the reason — the decision casts more of a shadow on the ingredient. It wouldn’t be surprising if demferrous gluconate liquidand continues to wane in the U.S., as well as other markets that tend to pay close attention to the healthfulness of theirnature’s life magnesium malate food.
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