You may be someone who reads food labels and tries to keep an eye on everything you put in your body. But no matter how many labels you read, you could still be consuming things you’d rather put on your “do not eat” list. Do you ever know what gives your food color or a certain flavor? From human hair in your bread to fish bladder in your beer, there are a lot of additives and gross ingredients present in your food mocking your ignorance.
We don’t want ourselves to be the only people enlightened and hence thought we’d share with you certain hardcore bizarre facts found in your food. Here is just a few of these unpleasant and, frankly, disgusting secret ingredients you’re probably eating on a regular basis.
1. Sheep secretions in your chewing gum:
Lanolin, also known as wool wax, is a yellow wax-like substance secreted by glands of wool-bearing animals, such as sheep. Simply put, it is sheep sweat. It is what makes your gum juicy and is called ‘gum base’ on the package. It is also a chief ingredient in vitamin D3 supplements.
2. Bugs make your food red:
Carmine, commonly used as a red food coloring for fruit juices and candy, is made by boiling the shells of the female cochineal insect in a sodium carbonate solution or ammonia. It takes about 70,000 of the bugs to produce one pound of dye.
The popular coffee chain ‘Starbucks’ even confessed to having used crushed red bugs in their popular Strawberry Frappuccino drink. While it looks pretty, WHO warns that cochineal extract can trigger allergic reactions and asthma. So much for the red drink!
3. Calf stomach in cheese:
Cheese, mainly in the U.K, contains an ingredient called rennet which is basically no milky deal but the fourth stomach of a cow. But don’t give up on all cheeses; it is possible to buy some that do not contain animal rennet.
4. Beaver anal glands in ice creams and candies:
Your raspberry candies, vanilla, strawberry and raspberry ice creams might be enhanced by “castoreum,” a mixture of the anal secretions and urine of beavers. It’s also found in perfume. The FDA-approved product is categorized under “natural flavoring,” so you won’t know if you’re eating it.
5. Bone dust in sugar:
While sugar is mostly cane or beet sugar, in order to enhance that white color, manufacturers include bone char of cattle as a whitening agent. If you wish to avoid having some ground cattle bones through sugar, make sure to buy only 100% beet sugar or unbleached, unprocessed sugar (the one that hasn’t undergone the filtration process).
6. Rodent Hair in mac & cheese and peanut butter:
It is believed that each box of mac and cheese contains 1 rodent hair per 50 grams. This falls within FDA regulations and is labeled on the package as ‘natural contaminants.’ If only we understood in the first go that ‘natural’ doesn’t mean veggies all the time.
1 rodent hair for every 100g chocolate, 22 rodent hairs for every 100g cinnamon and five rodent hairs for every 18oz jar of peanut butter.
7. Wood pulp in Salad Dressings:
Cellulose, or virgin wood pulp that is more commonly identified as sawdust, is an ingredient found in shredded cheese, salad dressings, chocolate milk and more. It is added to foods to keep them from clumping by blocking moisture, and can thicken foods in the pace of oil or flour (as these are costly ingredients).
8. Secretions of Laccifer lacca for candy glaze:
Coating your favorite shiny sweets, like jelly beans. Look for it on ingredients lists as “confectioner’s glaze”.
Shellac is a secret ingredient that makes sweets smooth and stops them melting in your hand. It is derived from the secretions of Laccifer lacca, a bug from the forests of India and Thailand.
9. Fish Bladder in Beer:
Isinglass is a gelatin-like substance made from the swim bladder of fish. It is added to unfiltered and unpasteurized beer to help remove any unwanted yeast and solid particles. Isinglass, or dried fish bladder, gives beer its golden glow, which is primarily used in British beers.
10. Raisins have fruit fly eggs:
FDA permits 10 insect and 35 fruit fly eggs per 8 ounces of raisins.
11. Coal Tar as Food coloring:
Artificially-colored orange, yellow or greenish food and drinks contain dyes derived from tartrazine. The food additive comes from coal tar and some studies suggest it causes hyperactivity in children.
When manufacturers began making synthetic food coloring nearly 120 years ago, they relied heavily on coal tar (the byproduct of carbonized coal). Although certifiable color additives have been called coal-tar colors because of their traditional origins, today they are synthesized mainly from raw materials obtained from petroleum.
12. Human hair in bread:
Amino acids are essential for our health. One such amino, called L-Cysteine, is often used in dough conditioners, which softens mass-produced bread and used to prolong the shelf life of bread. While this amino acid is found in duck hair, chicken feathers, and cow horns, the most common source is human hair. It has been reported that most of the hair used to make L-Cysteine comes from China, where it’s gathered from barbershops and hair salons.
You can avoid L-Cysteine by buying fresh bread from a local baker as it is not an additive in flour. Steer clear of fast food places such as McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts and Burger King too, who all use L-Cysteine as an additive. McDonald’s uses the duck feather variety in its Baked Hot Apple Pie and Warm Cinnamon Roll.
13. Virgin Boy Egg:
While this may not be a staple in your diet, it is in someone’s! Considered as a part of the “local intangible cultural heritage” of Dongyang, China, urine of young school boys, preferably under 10, is collected and used to boil eggs.
14. Ttonsul – A traditional Korean wine containing human feces:
This Korean drink is a traditional wine possessing medicinal qualities and, human feces. Moreover, Wiki says that medicines made from feces are old news in China, Japan, and Korea. Not surprised, really.
Are you sufficiently weirded out? These ingredients would make anyone queasy – but many of them are bad news for anyone trying to follow a vegan or vegetarian diet. This article is a realization of the fact that staying vegetarian in this world isn’t a cake walk anymore.