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| absurd marketing bullshittery |
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| Zero999:
--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on May 30, 2022, 08:08:24 pm ---Actually anything industrial is going to contain various additives, some of which may be surprising for someone not working in the food industry. --- End quote --- There are also additives with funny names, yet are perfectly natural and harmless. --- Quote ---If you want to be half sure of what you buy, you'll need to buy fresh food only. And even so, it may still contain traces of various chemicals like antibiotics, pesticides, etc. --- End quote --- There are such chemicals in the air and water, so it's virtually impossible to avoid them. The overuse of antibiotics is a problem, but the tiny traces in food do no harm. It's the fact they're given to animals and humans, when unnecessary. --- Quote ---People being sensitive to gluten must ingest a significant amount of it to get any side-effect, so a small amount of it is probably of no consequence whatsoever. Of course there may be exceptions to this, and if there are actual cases of gluten allergies that can trigger reaction even with traces of it, please chime in. --- End quote --- Some people only need to ingest a small amount in order for it to be a problem. The problem is it has a cumulative effect. Eating a trace every now and then isn't a problem, but doing so regularly can cause a lot of damage. It's what makes it so difficult to manage. |
| Halcyon:
--- Quote from: wraper on May 30, 2022, 08:29:06 am --- --- Quote from: Halcyon on May 30, 2022, 02:01:26 am --- --- Quote from: wraper on May 28, 2022, 08:51:00 am --- --- Quote from: Halcyon on May 28, 2022, 01:20:29 am ---You also see "Gluten Free" on some packs of bacon... It's used purely as a marketing strategy to appear "healthier", even though bacon never contained gluten in the first place. --- End quote --- Except you can buy bacon which contains gluten due to additives which may not be apparent on a first glance. --- End quote --- What the hell kind of bacon are you guys eating over there? --- End quote --- Check all bacon in your favorite supermarket, you may find some with additives too. --- End quote --- The most common additives found in bacon are nitrites and occasionally some spices or perhaps natural smoke flavouring. None of them contain gluten either. |
| Assafl:
Many people don't appreciate the wizardry that goes into making a shelf stable food product that will look appetizing and be safe for consumption - after weeks, or months or even years on a shelf in a non-airconditioned grocery. Take syneresis - the expulsion of liquid from a gel (syneresis is what makes cheese separate from the whey which is expelled from the milk). Now say you want to make a shelf stable Jelly - Gelatin tends to undergo syneresis after a while (leave a home made Jelly in the fridge and it'll end up in a puddle), or a yogurt from cow's milk which doesn't have enough protein (and hence becomes a jelly like "yogurt-ish" thing - that BTW - usually has whey on top since Syneresis continues). So you'll need to stabilize the gel. Adding more Gelatin will help (as will adding NFMS - Non-Fat-Milk-Solids to cow milk for Yogurt). Or you can add binders (water "glues" - or hydrocolloids) like flour, or carrageenan (think Danaone Yogurt), or Gellan, or Pectin - or usually - since each these will impart an unwanted flavor to the Gel if too much is used - a long list of these - each in a very small undetectable amount. Some of these may have additional binders. Or agents that help them dissolve. Some - like Gellan - will become a snot like suspension in a liquid. It has to be powerfully sprayed into a liquid to disperse well. Try to mix corn starch into hot water and see how difficult it is to dissolve the lumps. Luckily for corn starch - it has no problem with cold water. Or take a Snickers bar in a gas station... Shone on by sunlight during the day, cooled down at night. They melt - but unlike chocolate - keep its shape. In the past we'd know it underwent heating an cooling by the cocoa butter separating as a whitish sheen on the bar. I think they solved that. How - I don't know. My guess is something the stabilizes the chocolate emulsion. Also, when you see CMCs, those are cool - they harden when heated. Most hydrocolloids soften or melt when heated. If the food technologist wants something to remain stable when heated - CMC (a cellulose gum) will harden when heated. Great for that Snickers bar! Many suppliers of these starches (companies like ADM, Cargill, American Starch, Ajinomoto, CP Kelco and many others) can sell the base product (e.g. Carrageenan Iota or Kappa, Acacia or Carob bean gums, Pectin) or sell a proprietary mix - (e.g. Stab 2000 from Louis Francois a manufacturer in France) - If it is proprietary - what does it contain - does it contain gluten? So when I look at a "bag of (simple) chips" - I don't believe them. For example - how is the oil stabilized? What prevents it from going rancid? Nitrogen in the packaging helps. As does the air and UV tight modern (annoying to open) film bags. But still. Try to taste a day old chips - and it had better days... Usually they add anti-oxidants, which absorb the radicals without becoming free radicals themselves. Where are they in the ingredients list? Probably too low a concentration so that they have to be disclosed. In Japan, you'll usually find a tiny bag of oxygen scavenger (usually activated charcoal) that absorbs any spare oxygen that gets in... Like a getter in a vacuum tube. In Europe the regulators don't trust you to not eat the scavenger so it has to be in the food! So being able to mark "Gluten Free" is really tracing back the sources in a food safety compliant way. It is hard work in any case in the modern technology heavy world. Definitely not a "marketing" logo in the sense of "stating the obvious" - but more in declaring the "this bag of chips is designed to suitable for a larger crowd than most other chips" - we are auditing our supply chain to ensure that indeed - no flour is used in making this product. The other chips may or may not have gluten - caveat emptor. |
| CatalinaWOW:
--- Quote from: Assafl on May 31, 2022, 06:10:08 am ---Many people don't appreciate the wizardry that goes into making a shelf stable food product that will look appetizing and be safe for consumption - after weeks, or months or even years on a shelf in a non-airconditioned grocery. Take syneresis - the expulsion of liquid from a gel (syneresis is what makes cheese separate from the whey which is expelled from the milk). Now say you want to make a shelf stable Jelly - Gelatin tends to undergo syneresis after a while (leave a home made Jelly in the fridge and it'll end up in a puddle), or a yogurt from cow's milk which doesn't have enough protein (and hence becomes a jelly like "yogurt-ish" thing - that BTW - usually has whey on top since Syneresis continues). So you'll need to stabilize the gel. Adding more Gelatin will help (as will adding NFMS - Non-Fat-Milk-Solids to cow milk for Yogurt). Or you can add binders (water "glues" - or hydrocolloids) like flour, or carrageenan (think Danaone Yogurt), or Gellan, or Pectin - or usually - since each these will impart an unwanted flavor to the Gel if too much is used - a long list of these - each in a very small undetectable amount. Some of these may have additional binders. Or agents that help them dissolve. Some - like Gellan - will become a snot like suspension in a liquid. It has to be powerfully sprayed into a liquid to disperse well. Try to mix corn starch into hot water and see how difficult it is to dissolve the lumps. Luckily for corn starch - it has no problem with cold water. Or take a Snickers bar in a gas station... Shone on by sunlight during the day, cooled down at night. They melt - but unlike chocolate - keep its shape. In the past we'd know it underwent heating an cooling by the cocoa butter separating as a whitish sheen on the bar. I think they solved that. How - I don't know. My guess is something the stabilizes the chocolate emulsion. Also, when you see CMCs, those are cool - they harden when heated. Most hydrocolloids soften or melt when heated. If the food technologist wants something to remain stable when heated - CMC (a cellulose gum) will harden when heated. Great for that Snickers bar! Many suppliers of these starches (companies like ADM, Cargill, American Starch, Ajinomoto, CP Kelco and many others) can sell the base product (e.g. Carrageenan Iota or Kappa, Acacia or Carob bean gums, Pectin) or sell a proprietary mix - (e.g. Stab 2000 from Louis Francois a manufacturer in France) - If it is proprietary - what does it contain - does it contain gluten? So when I look at a "bag of (simple) chips" - I don't believe them. For example - how is the oil stabilized? What prevents it from going rancid? Nitrogen in the packaging helps. As does the air and UV tight modern (annoying to open) film bags. But still. Try to taste a day old chips - and it had better days... Usually they add anti-oxidants, which absorb the radicals without becoming free radicals themselves. Where are they in the ingredients list? Probably too low a concentration so that they have to be disclosed. In Japan, you'll usually find a tiny bag of oxygen scavenger (usually activated charcoal) that absorbs any spare oxygen that gets in... Like a getter in a vacuum tube. In Europe the regulators don't trust you to not eat the scavenger so it has to be in the food! So being able to mark "Gluten Free" is really tracing back the sources in a food safety compliant way. It is hard work in any case in the modern technology heavy world. Definitely not a "marketing" logo in the sense of "stating the obvious" - but more in declaring the "this bag of chips is designed to suitable for a larger crowd than most other chips" - we are auditing our supply chain to ensure that indeed - no flour is used in making this product. The other chips may or may not have gluten - caveat emptor. --- End quote --- The "Gluten Free" marking should mean what you described. As I described in my earlier post a gluten sensitive acquaintance has discovered that this thorough process has not always happened. Hence it can be a different form of absurd marketing bullshittery. Either a complete lie (no tracing at all) or a partial lie (some tracing, but not enough to protect everyone). The gluten sensitive posters who have expressed relief at how much easier it is to shop with this marking should take note of her experience. While those with lower levels of sensitivity may survive these stretches of the truth it has hospitalized the individual in question. I can't speak to whether her issue is an allergy or some extreme form of celiac disease or some third possibility - her condition is merely a proof of existence situation. |
| jasonRF:
--- Quote from: Halcyon on May 30, 2022, 11:39:32 pm --- --- Quote from: wraper on May 30, 2022, 08:29:06 am --- --- Quote from: Halcyon on May 30, 2022, 02:01:26 am --- --- Quote from: wraper on May 28, 2022, 08:51:00 am --- --- Quote from: Halcyon on May 28, 2022, 01:20:29 am ---You also see "Gluten Free" on some packs of bacon... It's used purely as a marketing strategy to appear "healthier", even though bacon never contained gluten in the first place. --- End quote --- Except you can buy bacon which contains gluten due to additives which may not be apparent on a first glance. --- End quote --- What the hell kind of bacon are you guys eating over there? --- End quote --- Check all bacon in your favorite supermarket, you may find some with additives too. --- End quote --- The most common additives found in bacon are nitrites and occasionally some spices or perhaps natural smoke flavouring. None of them contain gluten either. --- End quote --- Some natural smoke flavoring is made using barley, which is why many folks with celiac avoid products with that flavoring unless it is labeled gluten free. I’m personally not aware of bacons sold in our local grocery store that have gluten, but I haven’t spent the hours required to research them all, either. It takes so much time to research all the different kinds of items, that once we find one that is safe we usually just continue to buy it as long as the label doesn’t change. Edit: I should add that “natural flavor” in general might contain gluten, so again unless the label says gluten free (or the company has a policy regarding labels) then I won’t buy it. Likewise with “caramel color” (the reason Rice Krispies aren’t gluten free), “modified food starch”, etc. And then some products that have gluten free ingredients are manufacured in a way that they may become contaminated. Labels on most products are ambiguous so a celiac cannot know if they are safe. Jason |
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