Carrageenan, Its Use Doesn't Gel

I've been tempted to buy soymilk again. 'Tis the season of eggnog, hot chocolate, and warm spiced chais ... since dairy milk doesn't mesh with a Bix constitution, soymilk proved a great alternative. It's also convenient. While I've had success with homemade cashew and almond milks, they're not always at the ready. Thanks to Dean Foods, the largest dairy distributor and processor in the world, and owner of the ubiquitous Silk Soymilk, I could easily pick up a quart of this stuff while shopping.

But I don't do the soy anymore...

The day I read the American Heart Association's grim review of soy protein and soy isoflavones (a review I've summarized in the bulleted list at the bottom of this post) was the day I hung up the soymilk.

There's a third reason why I won't buy Silk Soymilk (besides its health risks, and patronage of a company - Dean Foods - whose business is factory farming): carrageenan.

What is carrageenan?

Carrageenan is a food additive. It's used as a thickener, or "texturizer". It's extracted from certain types of marine algae or seaweed, which gives the impression that food containing it is "all natural". Unfortunately, it produces a response in animals' gastrointestinal tracts that is anything but natural.

An intensive and very persuasive review of 45 studies of carrageenan was published in the government-funded journal Environmental Health Prospectives (EHP) in October, 2001:¹

Review of Harmful Gastrointestinal Effects of Carrageenan in Animal Experiments

The author, Dr. Joanne Tobacman, concludes:

"There seems to be enough evidence associating carrageenan with significant gastrointestinal lesions, including malignancies, to avoid ingesting it."
- Tobacman, Carrageenan May Cause Stomach Lesions, Cancer

Apparently there was enough evidence that in 1972 the FDA considered restricting its use in food. No restriction came to pass. In 1979 they indicated a regulation was in the works. No regulation ensued.

Carrageenan is languishing on the FDA's GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) list. Probably the only reason it's there is via trust that manufacturers will use a heavier-weight version of carrageenan, one thought to be less toxic. It is this distinction - high molecular weight (undegraded) carrageenan vs. the known-to-be-harmful low molecular weight (degraded) carrageenan - that was intended, among other things, to be spelled out in the 1970's regulation ... the one that never materialized.

Thanks to Tobacman and the research she meticulously nitpicked, we now know this distinction may be pointless:

"Bacterial action, stomach acid, and food preparation may lead to degraded carrageenan by transforming the higher molecular weight form of the gum into the lower molecular weight form."
- Tobacman, Carrageenan May Cause Stomach Lesions, Cancer

Let's Talk Amounts

Below is a Table from Tobacman's Review. It lists carrageenan content in a few popular foods. I wish soy milk had been included.


Click for larger.
Take a look at the percent carrageenan in frosting mix (3% to 4%). Remember that figure. When guinea pigs were given 2% degraded carrageenan for 20-30 days, all of them developed ulcerations in their colon, and 75% of them developed >200 ulcers! When given a 1% undegraded solution, 80% developed ulcerations. They went as low as 0.1% and still routinely produced ulcers in these animals.

That's just a guinea pig, you say? In fact, mice, rats, ferrets, rabbits, and monkeys all developed ulcerations (rats were most susceptible to cancers) when fed carrageenan. Those are just animals, you say? Tobacman conducted her own studies on human breast tissue, with foreboding results:

"At concentrations as low as 0.00014% ... carrageenan was associated with [mammary] cell death. ... The destruction of these cells in tissue culture by a low concentration of a widely used food additive suggests a dietary mechanism for mammary carcinogenesis not considered previously."
- Filament Disassembly and Loss of Mammary Myoepithelial Cells after Exposure to alpha-Carrageenan

Just last month (November 2006), Tobacman et al. published results of a study on human intestinal cells:

"These results show, for the first time, that exposure of human intestinal epithelial cells to carrageenan triggers a distinct inflammatory [reaction]."
- Carrageenan Induces Interleukin-8 Production through Distinct Bcl10 Pathway in Normal Human Colonic Epithelial Cells

Ulcers, inflammatory bowel disease, and possible cancers of the colon, breast, and prostate. No, thank you. I'm not that enamored of Silk Soymilk or any other carrageenan-containing food to risk these ailments. It's not as if manufacturers have no options. Locust bean, guar, and xanthan gums provide similar thickening traits as carrageenan without the risks.

I guess it's back to my nut milks ... 2006, the year of the nut.

________¹ The EHP is published by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a division of the US Department of Health and Human Services. I say this because I like to believe there's some entity that's not in the business of being in business. I'm not so dewy-eyed to think my beliefs apply to a division of the US government, but at least the NIH can be a little more objective than, say, Dean Foods.

Photo of Irish moss, a type of red algae used to extract carrageenan, by Richard Aumonier, a sculptor based in London.
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