Living-Deliberately.com

And how nasty it is!

Carrageenan is seaweed you know? So it’s natural, right? Ha! About as “natural” as MSG (which comes from rice), Splenda (which comes from sugar…kinda), and Aspertame (comes from oil). One finds it in processed foods: milk, ice cream, cottage cheese, yogurt, frosting, cheese spreads, baby formula….the list is quite long.

Long ago I started weeding out and avoiding foods that contained Carrageenan for the simple reason that it is an additive used to replace fat and gelatin qualties in foods that I preferred to have in their whole state. For instance, I think MILK should be MILK…pasturize it if you must but adding crap and homogenizing it is officially taking a whole food and making it a processed food in my opinion. Until recently I couldn’t/wouldn’t afford good, unhomgenized milk, but I had avoided Carrgeenan in ice cream, cottage cheese, yogurt…I make our frostings from scratch, we don’t eat cheese spreads, I breastfed the babies, etc.

But beyond just messing with something whole and making it a “recipe”, it turns out Carrgageen, and most especially the solvents used to process it, is a highly antagonistic additive. Consider some of these quotes:

Some folks can eat just about anything. Some people might
have no problem producing a tall glass of homemade soymilk,
then converting it to chocolate milk by adding the
following ingredients: Three teaspoons of sugar. One
teaspoon of chocolate powder. Two tablespoons of Vaseline
petroleum jelly. The Vaseline might produce gastric
distress, and the soymilk drinkers would erroneously
conclude that they are “allergic” to soy. Some people
do not experience gastric discomfort caused by the
Vaseline-like food additive, carrageenan. Many people do.Carrageenan is a commonly used food additive that is
extracted from red seaweed by using powerful alkali
solvents. These solvents would remove the tissues
and skin from your hands as readily as would any acid.

Carrageenan is a thickening agent. It’s the vegetarian
equivalent of casein, the same protein that is isolated
from milk and used to thicken foods. Casein is also
used to produce paints, and is the glue used to hold
a label to a bottle of beer. Carrageenan is the magic
ingredient used to de-ice frozen airplanes sitting on
tarmacs during winter storms.

And from the same website, which is notmilk.com:

Carrageenan is a gel. It coats the insides of a stomach,
like gooey honey or massage oil. Digestive problems often
ensue. Quite often, soy eaters or soymilk drinkers react
negatively to carrageenen, and blame their discomforting
stomachaches on the soy.

Studies have been done that link Carrageenan to colonic cancer and gastro issues…hmmm, inflammatory bowel syndrome anyone? Here in our household we have well (ha haa) documented gastro issues of the rather pungent kind when nasty ice cream like Mayfield, containing Carrageenan, is consumed. Out here in our county, along with no wine, one also can not buy a brand of ice cream that does NOT contain Carrageenan. So we gave some a shot recently. BAD IDEA. On a much more serious note, our son Wheaton had an as-of-yet undiagnosed metabolic disorder as an infant and was not growing. The doctors surgically installed a g-tube in his belly and force fed him forumla containing high amounts of Carrageenan (not that they cared; it was the scientifically engineered nutrient content they were after). The more they insisted we pump through him, the sicker he became, the more mucous his body produced, and he nearly died. Rapid improvement occurred when we stoped feeding him the formula under a new doctor’s care, who wanted him breastfed and self-selecting his diet (which was all whole foods) while his gut healed. It was then that we started looking into food additives, most of which trigger our boys’ gastro-reflex issues.

During the latter half of the twentieth century, inflammatory bowel disease and gastrointestinal malignancy have been major causes of morbidity and mortality in the United States. Even with improvements in treatment and cancer screening, colorectal cancer remains the second leading cause of cancer mortality in the United States. The Western diet has been considered a possible source of inflammatory bowel disease and colorectal malignancy, and intensive efforts have been undertaken to study the impact of specific constituents of the Western diet, such as fiber and fat (1-3).

In addition to food additive uses, carrageenan has been used in cosmetics, pesticides, and pharmaceuticals, as well as in toothpaste and room deodorizers. It has been used as a treatment of ulcers and as an emulsifier in mineral oil laxatives, liquid petrolatum, and cod liver oil. However, its predominant role has been in food preparations, in which it is used across a wide variety of food groups because of its ability to substitute for fat and its ability to combine easily with milk proteins to increase solubility and improve texture. Hence, it is used in low-calorie formulations of dietetic beverages, infant formula, processed low-fat meats, whipped cream, cottage cheese, ice cream, and yogurt, as well as in other products. From its original use several centuries ago as a thickener in Irish pudding and its incorporation into blancmange, the food additive use has extended widely and cuts across both low-fat and high-fat diets. It is often combined with other gums, such as locust bean gum, to improve the texture of foods (12-14,22,41,42).

Inflammatory bowel disease and colorectal malignancy represent major sources of morbidity and mortality in the United States. A possible factor in the etiology of these pathologies is exposure to carrageenan.

The potential role of carrageenan in the development of gastrointestinal malignancy and inflammatory bowel disease requires careful reconsideration of the advisability of its continued use as a food additive.

Read the whole study here.

So my bottom line? My body was made to process FOOD. That is what I should feed it; not manufactured substitutes. Real fat is more digestable than some slimy chemical added to replace the fat, never mind all the nutritional and health BENEFITS from fat! Ice Cream should be Ice CREAM, not Ice CANCER-SLIME. Makes a real treat too, rather than a motivating force to run for the bathroom.

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