A friend recently gave me a couple of pages downloaded from a website that claims
Carrageenans is implicated in a wide range of medical problems including diabetes.
Carrageenans or carrageenins (/ˌkærəˈɡiːnənz/ KARR-ə-GHEE-nənz from Irish carraigín, "little rock") are a family of linear sulphated polysaccharides that are extracted from red edible seaweeds. They are widely used in the food industry, for their gelling, thickening, and stabilizing properties. Their main application is in dairy and meat products, due to their strong binding to food proteins.
Gelatinous extracts of the Chondrus crispus (Irish Moss) seaweed have been used as food additives since approximately the 1400s.[1] Carrageenan is a vegetarian and vegan alternative to gelatin in some applications, in some instances it is used to replace gelatin in confectionery.
Carrageenan has undergone many long-term dietary studies under defined regulatory conditions en route to its current global regulatory status. While some indicate that carrageenan safely passes through rat GI tracts without adverse effect when it is a dietary ingredient,[2] other animal dietary studies have observed colitis-like disease and tumour promotion.[3] In the late 2000s, some scientists raised concerns about whether the amount of "degraded carrageenan" (poligeenan) in food-grade carrageenan may lead to health problems, leading to a debate in the research literature.[4] It has yet to be determined whether such observations are pertinent to dietary safety considerations.
The use of carrageenan in infant formula, organic or otherwise, is prohibited in the EU for precautionary reasons, but is permitted in other foodstuffs.[5] In the US, it is permitted in organic and non-organic foods, including juices, chocolate milk, and organic infant formula.
Production
Although carrageenans were introduced on an industrial scale in the 1930s, they were first used in China around 600 B.C. (where Gigartina was used) and in Ireland around 400 A.D.[citation needed] Carrageen gelatin can be prepared at home using the traditional recipe found in Diderot's Encyclopédie and used for centuries. 5oz rinsed Irish moss is cooked with 8 quarts of water for 10 minutes, stirred as it boils. Hard water should be mixed with 1/2 oz of borax. Two quarts of cold water are rapidly added to the hot brew, and after the mixture has cooled it is strained through a cloth. It is then cooled for 24 hours and becomes gelatinous.
Food and other domestic uses
Desserts, ice cream, cream, milkshakes, salad dressings, sweetened condensed milks, and sauces: gel to increase viscosity
Beer: clarifier to remove haze-causing proteins
Pâtés and processed meats (ham, e.g.): substitute for fat, increase water retention, and increase volume, or improve sliceability
Toothpaste: stabilizer to prevent constituents separating
Fruit Gushers: ingredient in the encapsulated gel
Fire fighting foam: thickener to cause foam to become sticky
Shampoo and cosmetic creams: thickener
Air freshener gels
Marbling: the ancient art of paper and fabric marbling uses a carrageenan mixture on which to float paints or inks; the paper or fabric is then laid on it, absorbing the colours
Shoe polish: gel to increase viscosity
Biotechnology: gel to immobilize cells/enzymes
Pharmaceuticals: used as an inactive excipient in pills/tablets
Soy milk and other plant milks: used to thicken, in an attempt to emulate the consistency of whole milk
Diet sodas: to enhance texture and suspend flavours
Pet food
Personal lubricants
Vegetarian hot dogs
Health concerns
Cancer and gastrointestinal effects
There have been several peer-reviewed animal studies suggesting tumor promotion or initiation by carrageenan.[14][15][16][17]...Tobacman's review of 45 publicly funded studies concludes that "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."[3] As of 2011, Kanneganti et al. note that "the role of both CGN [carrageenan] and dCGN [degraded carrageenan] as carcinogens still remains controversial".[19]
Carrageenan's function as a food additive relates to its large molecular weight (200,000–800,000 Da) and tight binding to food protein but also influences carrageenan's fate as it passes through the GI tract. Oral feeding studies with laboratory animals indicate dietary carrageenan is excreted quantitatively [20][21] and is not accumulated in body organs such as the liver or colon;[22] studies disagree with respect to whether it triggers gastrointestinal tract inflammation or contributes to tumor promotion.[3][23] Long-term oral feeding studies found no adverse effects on male or female infant baboons reared from birth to 112 days of age on infant formula containing carrageenan at five times the concentration typically present in human infant formula as their only diet[24] but did observe histopathologic changes in rhesus monkey colon after drinking a solution containing 1% undegraded carrageenan.[25] Similarly, while no adverse effects were observed for multi-generations of rats fed up to 5% dietary carrageenan,[26][27] or on hamsters and rats fed for a lifetime diets containing up to 5% carrageenan,[28][29] administration of carrageenan to rodents in drinking water has resulted in some observations of GI-tract effects.[30][31][32] Tight binding of carrageenan to ingested food proteins is considered less available than in drinking water for interaction with the absorptive cells of the GI tract, although some studies have linked food-grade carrageenan to gastrointestinal disease in laboratory animals, including ulcerative colitis-like disease, intestinal lesions, and ulcerations.[33][34][35][36][37]
Carrageenan is inert to hydrolysis by intestinal enzymes in both humans and monogastric animals.[38][39] Many older studies and a few recent studies have been based on the use of "degraded carrageenan", a fraction of low-molecular weight segments of the carrageenan molecular backbone called "poligeenan". To resolve this within the scientific community, the US Adopted Names Council assigned the name "poligeenan" to the fragments with molecular weight of 10,000 to 20,000 Da.[40][41] Approximately 8% of the fragments of food-grade carrageenan are of molecular mass less than 50,000 Da, in excess of the recommended minimum of 5% set by the European Scientific Committee on Food to ensure that the presence of poligeenan is kept to a minimum.[4] The proportion of this 8% that consists of poligeenan is unknown.
Carrageenan
When I first wrote about carrageenan on this site 10 years ago, I reported that some animal studies had linked degraded forms of it (the type not used in food) to ulcerations and cancers of the gastrointestinal tract. But around that time, a prominent researcher in the field, Joanne K. Tobacman, M.D., now associate professor of clinical medicine at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, conducted studies linking undegraded carrageenan - the type that is widely used in foods - with malignancies and other stomach problems. (Degraded and undegraded carrageenan differ by molecular weight with undegraded carrageenan having the higher weight.)
Over the years Dr. Tobacman has published 18 peer-reviewed studies that address the biological effects of carrageenan and is convinced that it is harmful to human health. In April 2012, she addressed the National Organic Standards Board on this issue and urged reconsideration of the use of carrageenan in organic foods.
In her presentation, Dr. Tobacman said that her research has shown that exposure to carrageenan causes inflammation and that when we consume processed foods containing it, we ingest enough to cause inflammation in our bodies. She explained that all forms of carrageenan are capable of causing inflammation. This is bad news. We know that chronic inflammation is a root cause of many serious diseases including heart disease, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, and cancer.
Dr. Tobacman also told the board that in the past, drug investigators actually used carrageenan to cause inflammation in tissues in order to test the anti-inflammatory properties of new drugs. And she reported further that when laboratory mice are exposed to low concentrations of carrageenan for 18 days, they develop "profound" glucose intolerance and impaired insulin action, both of which can lead to diabetes.
She maintains that both types of carrageenan are harmful and notes that "degraded carrageenan inevitably arises from higher molecular weight (food grade) carrageenan." Research suggests that acid digestion, heating, bacterial action and mechanical processing can all accelerate degradation of food-grade carrageenan.
All told, I recommend avoiding regular consumption of foods containing carrageenan. This is especially important advice for persons with inflammatory bowel disease.
