Hidden Meat

[Guest guest]

Hidden Meat

By Supriya Kelkar

 

Posted November 20, 2003

 

All glories to

Srila Prabhupada!

Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada!

 

Did you know that if a product has "flavors" listed on the label that it may include meat? If not, read on.

 

Your servant,

Krishna-kripa das

 

Nov 2003

Supriya Kelkar

skelkar@umich.edu

meat in flavors

 

To whom it may concern:

 

I'm writing to inform you about a salient but well-hidden health issue that I think ISKCON would find very informative. I came across the subject when I was eating a store-bought item that had a very "meaty" taste to it. A strict vegetarian, I immediately checked the ingredients to make sure I hadn't made a mistake in my purchase. There was no meat listed under the ingredients, but there was a listing that I had always found very mysterious: "flavors."

 

I called the company, and was told that there was meat in the product. I asked why the meat wasn't listed in the ingredients. The company representative informed me that meat is often placed under the label "flavors,natural flavors," or "artificial flavors," (an artificial flavor generally still has natural products in it, as only a certain percentage of it is artificial). I asked how this was possible. She told me that it was completely legal, and in checking with the FDA and other sources, it is. As long as the product being masked under "natural/artificial flavors" is not a common allergen, the company does not have to disclose that it is in the food item.

 

I began to call other leading food companies only to find that a great majority of them including Lipton, Prego (which does not make a single vegetarian pasta sauce), and Campbell's (the parent company of Prego, itself making only two vegetarian soups out of its numerous lines of soup), have meat products under their "flavors." Most of the companies responded indifferently. They did not seem to find it a problem that they were misleading millions of American consumers on a daily basis as long as they followed FDA guidelines. Still others, like Kraft, replied that they do not even keep track of what's in their "flavors" because they change so often.

 

As a representative of a socially conscious organization, I wanted to inform you of the issue, in hopes that you will be able to spread the word. Please feel free to contact me for responses from the companies and any other questions. Thank you for your time.

 

Sincerely,

Supriya Kelkar

skelkar@umich.edu

 

[theist]

Everything with only perhaps a few exceptions in this present culture is contaminated. The best way I have found is to only buy unprocessed ingredients and put them together yourself.

 

Even that waxy coating we find on veggies is filthy. It comes from a certain insect (whose name I have forgotten).

 

Wouldn't it be nice if we could buy produce and other food items from devotee run and owned stores?

[Kulapavana]

wax used on fruit and vegetables to keep them from wilting and damage is derived from petroleum oil. you are probably talking about a natural red food coloring which is made from crushed tropical bugs (carmine). petroleum wax is non-toxic and very cheap (almost the same stuff as in candles)

[theist]

yes that's it, carmine. Mostly from India. I don't think petroleum based wax is all that is used on foods though. I look for an article later.

[theist]

March 1, 2002 -- Vegparadise News Bureau

 

 

Tropicana Is Bugging Your Juice

 

 

Like many people who read labels on products, Shari Feinberg was shocked to find that Tropicana was "bugging" her grapefruit juice.

When Shari purchased her Tropicana Season's Best Ruby Red Grapefruit Juice last month, she learned the ingredient that gave the beverage its bright red color was carmine. Carmine is derived from the cochineal beetle, a scale insect that is crushed to create this red dye.

 

Shari's shock led to a phone call to the company. She told the representative, "I don't want to drink crushed insect bodies in my juice. I asked why they couldn't use something like beet juice instead. The nice lady in customer relations took down my comments and said she'd pass them along."

 

When VIP called Tropicana ( a division of Pepsico) to ask for a list of juices that contained cochineal or carmine, the representative was surprised to learn that both were derived from insects. She said the company had no list of juices that contained these colors. She advised us to read the labels and that all ingredients were clearly indicated on those labels.

 

A spot check at a local supermarket revealed another juice that had been "bugged." Tropicana Pure Premium Orange Strawberry is "made from fresh oranges, not concentrate, 100% pure squeezed orange juice with calcium and strawberry and natural flavors and ingredients."

 

The ingredients listed were "100% pure squeezed pasteurized juice, Fruit Cal (calcium hydroxide, malic acid, and citric acid), banana puree, white grape juice concentrate, strawberry juice concentrate, natural flavors, and cochineal extract (color).

 

The customer relations representative assured VIP that carmine and cochineal are natural colors, and correctly so. She read us this definition of a natural color: "a natural color is derived from animal, plant or mineral sources."

 

Cochineal and its derivative carminic acid have a long history going back to pre-Hispanic Mexico when the Mixtec Indians used the dried and ground insects to create a color-fast red dye for fabrics.

 

In the 1900's cochineal-derived dyes began to appear as a food color in pork sausage, pies, dried fish and shrimp, candies, pills, jams, lipstick, rouge, and bright red maraschino cherries.

 

When red aniline dyes, a coal tar product, appeared in the1870's they began to replace cochineal in the production of fabrics. They did not replace the cochineal in food until later in the 1900's.

 

Because red aniline dyes 2 and 40 are both believed to be carcinogenic, cochineal is now being reconsidered as a safe food dye.

 

The Center for Science in the Public Interest in its Chemical Cuisine: CSPI's Guide to Food Additives describes carmine/cochineal extract as follows:

 

"Cochineal extract is a coloring extracted from the eggs of the cochineal beetle, which lives on cactus plants in Peru, the Canary Islands, and elsewhere. Carmine is a more purified coloring made from cochineal.

 

"These colorings, which are extremely stable, are used in some red, pink, or purple candy, yogurt, Compari, ice cream, beverages, and many other foods, as well as drugs and cosmetics.

 

"These colorings have caused allergic reactions that range from hives to life-threatening anaphylactic shock. It is not known how many people suffer from this allergy.

 

"The Food and Drug Administration should ban cochineal extract and carmine or, at the very least, require that they be identified clearly on food labels so that people could avoid them. Natural or synthetic substitutes are available.

 

"A label statement should also disclose that, Carmine is extracted from dried insects so that vegetarians and others who want to avoid animal products could do so."

 

 

 

 

[Kulapavana]

thanks for the article. I think carmine is also used on "red" pistachio nuts and some natural reddish ice creams (strawberry)

[theist]

even food items labeled as containing no animal products may not be vegetarian as they don't consider insects as animal.

 

I am confused on this issue. Originally I was thinking carmine which they get from the cochineal bug for dyes was the same as lac bugs from India which gets used on produce. Now I am thinking they may be different bugs.

 

Do you know Kulapavana?

[Kulapavana]

the insect which produces lac is different from cochineal bug. lac is collected without harming this insect, as it is something his bug exudes naturally. Lac is not generaly used in food as far as I know.

[theist]

Run a search here at AF on lac from this forum and a lot comes up. We had this conversation about one year ago but I had forgotten many of the details.

 

About 300,000 lac die to produce a kilo of shellac the article says. Yuck!

 

--------

 

 

 

Found on google.Turns out shellac is not the bugs but rather a resin that the lac bug produces.Some liken it to bees and honey, this guy calls it bug poop.

 

Also used for this is carnuaba wax, which is from a tree.So that wax on the apples and cucumbers may be of shellac or vegetable origin.They even use petroleum waxs.

 

The reasons are: Shiny gloss to attract consumers, and to lengthen shelve life by preserving the water content.Also stops weight loss for maximum profit.

 

_____

 

Do you Know what Shellac is?

ITS BUG POOP! and 'they' KILL zillions of poor little lac bugs to get it! OH MY!

 

 

--

 

The following article was written by Paul Ridden, of Animal Action, for the Vegan Village website - date unknown. Unfortunately, Vegan Village appears to be defunct. I couldn't find a Copyright for this article anywhere so I pulled it off Google and reproduced it - verbatim - here.

 

I'll let the article speak for itself....

 

 

--

 

It's used as a coating for fruit and vegetables. It's used as glazing on sweets. It's even used in varnish. It's claimed to be a natural product, but what exactly is Shellac? You may not want to know the answer.

 

Shellac comes from an insect called the lac (Laccifer Lacca). India and Thailand are the dominant producers but the US and Indonesia are the main users. Lac insects thrive on certain kinds of trees, the Palas, Kusum or Ber in India and the rain tree in Thailand. A 'crop' of egg-laying female lac (or brood lac) are tied to the twigs of the host trees. The brood lac can lay up to 100 eggs, which hatch into small red larvae and crawl along the twig and settle in to feed.

 

Both male and female lac larvae insert their long proboscis into the tree and draw out the sap. While they feed a protective layer is secreted from their bodies, the secretion hardens and completely covers their little bodies, leaving openings only for waste products and for breathing. The larvae mature under the protective coating until, after about 8 weeks, they are sexually mature. Only the male goes through a full metamorphosis, developing antennae, legs, wings and losing its long proboscis. The male has only one job, to fertilise the females, who retains her mouthparts but doesn't develop wings or eyes. After the male has performed his duty, he dies. Once fertilised, the female increases the production of the secretion and increases in size during the next 14 weeks. Once the next brood females are just about ready to lay their eggs, they are 'harvested'. The brood lac and all the secretion are scraped off the branches and left to dry out. The freshly scraped shellac, or sticklac, consists of the secretion, the brood lac, a crimson dye from the ovaries of the brood lac and twigs. A number of live brood lac are collected to form the next crop, the lifespan of the lac allows for 2 harvests per year. Sticklac is then sold for processing.

 

Manufacturers of shellac crush the sticklac and then remove sand, dust, and impurities such as the shrivelled insect bodies, the crimson dye and twigs. The remaining secretion or resin then undergoes a number of refining processes until commercial shellac results.

 

The manufacturers then sell it on to food producers, who coat fruit and vegetables and chocolate and coffee beans and some nuts in it, to paint manufacturers, who put it in their paint and varnish and floor polish, to cosmetics manufacturers, to dentists, who use it as a mould for dental plates, and so on.

 

About 300,000 lac are killed to produce 1Kg of shellac. Nearly 9 million kilos of shellac was exported from India alone in 1995-96 - my calculator won't even work out how many dead lac that makes! The UK imported 226,175 kilos during this period, which makes somewhere in the region of 67,800,000,000 dead female lac for one year's usage.

 

So be careful when you go to the supermarket or your corner shop to pick up your weekly shopping of fresh fruit and veg, the produce in your basket will most likely be coated in shellac. Don't be tempted by those shiny chocolate brazils in the sweet shop window cos they're probably coated in shellac. If you're a DIY buff then isn't it about time you found out what exactly was in the paint and varnish you so lovingly splash on your walls. And what about your hair lacquer Mrs? And those tablets you're taking, avoiding capsules because they're made from gelatin won't get you away from shellac!?! And those rubber gloves? And the ink for your newspaper? And so on, and so on...

 

 

 

...take the essence...SP letter to Krsnadasa 1972

 

 

[Kulapavana]

thanks for the info prabhu. yucky world! still, most if not all of the wax used here in US on produce comes from pertoleum. lac for furniture is still available for antique restoration, and it is quite expensive (and much less durable) than synthetic polyurethane coatings. but I'm worried about chocolate covered raisins with an enigmatic "glaze" in the list of ingredients /images/graemlins/frown.gif

[Streetstraw]

Any society regularly buying drinking water is run by demons. They'll also add dead animal parts wherever they please. Raksasafeller, Wrathchild, what can be expected?

[KrishnaBhakta]

i have a question. can this not be reported to the FDA, to inform them that there are a lot of vegetarians here, that they make it a law that if there is any kind of an ingredient in a food produce, or in a drink, it should be labeled. even insects are in the animal kingdom. so shouldn't they be listed under the animal product topic? just curious. but anyways, can't we inform the FDA?

[Gauracandra]

Jewish people have a K and other symbols for various levels of Kosher. Can't vegetarians put pressure on these companies to create a symbol that tells exactly how 'vegetarian' a product is? I think this would be a good campaign for PETA to engage in.

[Govindaram]

 

Hare Krishna

 

There are many products in the UK that have the V symbol, but contain eggs. The best thing to do is to eat fresh produce, and cook it for Krishna, these sudras will never learn.

 

 

[pranay2]

the choclatey shells on Nutties and James manufactured in India are made of extracts of killed insects.

the KitKat has beef. It has been verified by the chairman or some other high official of Nesle herself.

the lipstics get their colour from blood

the Iron supplement orange flavour syrup contains the blood of killed buffaloes.

cheese and chocolates contain extracts of calfes intestines.

Colas and Ice Creams gelatin are generally made of slaughtered animals bones to save money.

So does gel toothpastes and hair gel.

Bata shoes in India .Do you know Cows are flogged mercilessly to get the blood rushing to the skin before being killed?It is done for the extra softness of the leather.

[stymvjyt]

gelatin has meat in it