I’ve been wary of the ingredient Carrageenan for a while. It
is used as a thickener and stabilizer in a lot of foods especially in the
health food industry in milk and non-dairy milks like almond milk, coconut
milk, hemp milk and non-dairy and dairy ice creams. Something about it has
always given me a bad vibe though it has been used in all these supposedly
healthy health foods.
I started reading research studies about the negative impact
on carrageenan on gut health. Alarming results showed that carrageenan has:
-carcinogenic
properties
- causes intestinal
damage
- is pro-inflammatory
- can cause damage to
gut health and associated with digestion and gut issues
There is a lot of controversy on the studies. For one, it is
hard to transfer the results from rats and mice to humans. The results on the
rodents varied from study to study. And some studies used varying forms of
carrageenan. Some used undegraded carrageenan (allowed to be used in food) and
some with degraded (not allowed in food).
A couple of months ago, I predicted that we would start
seeing “carrageenan free” labels on foods in a couple of years. Pretty soon the
health concerns would be exposed and we would start to be more cognizant of
putting this stuff in our body.
And as I was walking the aisles of Whole Foods the other
day, I saw it. I saw it way way sooner than I had predicted. But there it was
staring at me in the face “No Carrageenan” right above the “No High Fructose
Corn Syrup”.
I hesitated to even blog about this, in fear of instilling
frustration. “What? I thought I have been doing the healthy thing by switching
to almond milk, by eating coconut ice cream. How do I know what to eat?” …and
as a result throw up your hands and giving up efforts to healthy eating.
That is certainly not my intention. My intention is to
encourage you to read ingredient labels. If you don’t know what an ingredient
is, decide if you want to put a foreign substance in your body.
The food companies will always come out with new ingredients
to stick in our food to make it last longer on the shelves, be more palatable,
more addictive, and more attractive etc. It is impossible to keep up and
research all of these ingredients. Stick to foods that are whole and
unprocessed then you don’t need to worry about it.
