Carrageenan: The Filler & Thickener in Your Commercial "Organic" Foods

What is carrageenan derived from? 

What is the agent used for? 

More importantly, what foods is it used?

I first read about carrageenan when looking through Dr. Andrew Weil's website. There are number of places on his website where you are gently warned of it's side-effects, and I say gently because (as Dr. Weil and many other experts for that matter explain) when tested the agent has proven not to be as safe as they thought it to be when organic dairy and soy producers started using it as a filler and thickener in their products. Dr. Weil has messages at the bottom of articles such as:

Avoid carageenan. This commonfood additive is used 

as a thickener and emulsifier in ice cream, yogurt, cottage cheese and 

other processed food products, including soy milk. 

It has been linked to intestinal ulcerations in animal studies.

(Read labels on soy products carefully.)

Diagram Credit: The Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry 

Carrageenan is a red seaweed extract found in Atlantic Ocean near Britain, continental Europe, and North America. After being processed  can be classified into one of the following to categories. Carrageenan has a low molecular weight, “degraded” carrageenan, or
high molecular weight, or “undegraded” carrageenan. The gum form is not as healthy as it looks and is one of the non-organic ingredients that is lurking in your organic food. "Organic foods" that are produced (or processed still have to be made, packaged shipped, and be "shelf stable" (as companies like to say) just like all other processed foods so "organic" mass-produced foods tend to use a few chemicals additives as well.

Here is an article from The Daily Green about the 38 Non-Organic Ingredients Found in 'USDA Organic' Foods. There is also a paper from the Cornucopia Institute on The Organic Watergate, which discusses, among other things, the bias and inadequacy of previous technical review on carrageenan. The paper is very enlightening for those who want to brush up on the hidden politics of the National Organic Standards Board created by congress and the board's shortcomings. Anyway, I could talk about the USDA and FDA for hours... refocusing,

The Organic Watergate's at the institute open their discussion of Carrageenan by revealing:


"Carrageenan was reviewed in 1995 by three scientists with professional relationships to corporate agribusiness, and only one pointed out the potential human health impacts of degraded carrageenan.  This is especially outrageous since the scientific community had known for decades, based on an abundance of peerreviewed published literature, that degraded carrageenan is an inflammatory agent and carcinogenic in lab animals.  Degraded carrageenan was listed as a “possible human carcinogen” by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer in 1983 – more than a decade before the 1995 TAP review."

They go on to explain that the International Agency for Research on Cancer identifies degraded carrageenan as an inflammatory and carcinogen given the low molecular weight of the agent. 

And here is why there is a debate among boards because even though "this inflammatory property of degraded carrageenan is not in dispute, especially since the medical research community has used degraded carrageenan for decades to induce acute inflammation in experimental trials conducted with lab animals, to test antiinflammation drugs, Carrageenan processors tend to portray the difference between degraded and undegraded carrageenan as a simple, black-and-white distinction.  They claim that food-grade carrageenan sold to food processors falls entirely in the undegraded category."

The Cornucopia Institute also created an amazing timeline of the development of use and debate of carrageenan from 1969-2012. I found the paragraph on events in March 2003 to be interesting: 

"March 2003:  The European Commission’s Scientific Committee on Food reviews 

Tobacman’s 2001 article, and reviews recent safety data on carrageenan. The 

Committee suggests that the amount of degraded carrageenan in food-grade 

carrageenan be kept to levels below 5%, 'in order to ensure that the presence of any 

degraded carrageenan is kept to a minimum.' The Commission also reaffirms its earlier 

position that it remains inadvisable to use carrageenan as an ingredient in infant formula."

Then in 2005: 

"Marinalg, the industry trade group, convenes a working group to determine the levels of 

degraded carrageenan in its products. The working group tests 12 samples of food-grade 

carrageenan from a variety of suppliers in six different laboratories, to measure the presence 

of degraded carrageenan and determine if the 5% limit is feasible. The results from the 

industry’s own test results are cause for serious concern...."

Finally, in recent development: 

"February 2012:  Despite human health and environmental concerns raised in the technical 

review, the Handling Committee unanimously votes to relist carrageenan on the 

National List of Approved Substances."

"May 2012:  The National Organic Standards Board will again review carrageenan during the 

sunset process, and will decide whether to continue allowing carrageenan in certified organic foods. " 

But this becomes a problem because then those who have not "connected the dots" between the FDA, the corporations and the government, reassure people that carrageenan is a safe ingredient and should not be confused with poligeenan. This is a chemically degraded derivative of carrageenan, which is  used for industrial (non-food) purposes. Claiming that it was improperly named "degraded carrageenan" for a while which gave the true carrageenan a bad name... They are then allowed to say that research indicates that poligeenan creates unfavorable health effects, but food-grade carrageenan has no known toxicity or carcinogenicity, and is recognized as safe by the FDA!!

Do with this what you may. I know conventional thought has a hard time grasping the need for all organic products much less a vegan diet and some may even say... But, like they say, knowledge is power and every little bit will help to steer our industry in plant-strong direction. Nutrition labels on mean nothing these days. These days carrageenan is not only in soy and milk products (cheese, almond milk, ice cream etc.) but companies but it in your meats and pet food! I'd rather eat a whole avocado rich in "good for you" fats, then sit down with a plastic bag of "fruit" gummies, that are marketed as fruity and healthy but have 5 to 8 ingredients. Fresh produce, local and home-made food is vital to nutritional health and the more you do it, the less time consuming it is.

Sources:
Dr. Andrew Weil's Q&A: Library, What Foods Cause Acne?, Published 7/18/2005
TLC How Stuff Works : What is Carageenan?
Food Babe: Carrageenan