Hidden Food Ingredients: The “Industry Standard” Scam that Touches Everyone

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It is becoming more and more common for foods to contain chemicals, additives and preservatives that are not listed on the ingredient list. The term “indus­try standard” is the device that offers a hiding place and makes this possible. When manufacturers use an “industry standard” ingredient in their product, they do not have to list it on the ingredient list.

These hidden ingredients lurk in many different foods. For those of us with sensitivities, or those who care about the food they eat, this poses a real problem because there is no way of knowing what is in the food. Undisclosed ingredients likely are to blame for causing health issues in countless people.

“INDUSTRY STANDARD” ALUMINUM

In 2018, the authors of a study in Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology wrote about aluminum as a known neurotoxicant, stat­ing that it “contributes to cognitive dysfunction and may contribute to Alzheimer’s disease.”¹ The study’s authors also pointed out that “Re­distribution of aluminum out of the brain is slow, so aluminum can be deposited in the brain for a long time.”

Nonetheless, food manufacturers have re­lied on aluminum additives in processed foods for decades. An assessment of dietary aluminum published in Food Additives and Contaminants in 1988 reported the major sources, at the time, to be “grain products, processed cheese, and salt.”² Aluminum in American cheese and pro­cessed cheese products is classified as industry standard, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) considers it GRAS (generally recognized as safe). Items that are classified as GRAS do not have to be added to food labels. Aluminum items that are secretly hiding in our food are also clas­sified as “good manufacturing practice” (GMP).

Processed cheese manufacturers use alumi­num in the form of sodium aluminum phosphate (SALP) to make cheese smooth and uniform so that it is spreadable or smoothable into individually wrapped slices.^3,4 The NIH says, “Basic SALP is one of many ‘emulsifying salts’ added to process cheese, cheese food and cheese spread which react with and change the protein of cheese to produce a smooth, uniform film around each fat droplet to prevent separation and bleeding of fat from the cheese. This produces a soft texture, easy melting characteristics and desirable slicing properties.”⁵

Other widely used aluminum additives include:⁶

• ALUMINUM LAKE DYES: Used in cake and cookie decorating. Many times, there is so much metal in a brightly colored frosted cookie, with red and blue sprinkles, that if you put it in the microwave, it will sparkle and crackle just like tinfoil does.
• ALUMINUM SULFATE: Used in canned crab meat, lobster, salmon, shrimp, tuna, pickles and relishes.
• SODIUM ALUMINUM SULFATE: Also used in pickles, relishes, baking powder and flour, including whole wheat flour. In baking powder, it serves as a pH-adjusting agent. In liquid or frozen whole eggs, egg whites and egg yolks, it serves as a stabilizer.
• POTASSIUM ALUMINUM SULFATE: Used as a pH-adjusting agent in ale, baking powder, beer, light beer, malt liquor and an­natto (which is often used to color cheese).
• MAGNESIUM ALUMINUM SILICATE: Used in chewing gum as a dusting powder.
• SODIUM ALUMINUM PHOSPHATE: Used as an emulsifying salt in cream cheese spread, processed cheese and processed cheese spread.

Adding aluminum to our food adds alu­minum to our body. Aluminum is even more toxic if bound with mercury inside the body.⁷ Aluminum does not leave the body with a che­lator but instead departs with silica.⁸ (A pinch of food-grade diatomaceous earth in water throughout the day can furnish silica.) Alumi­num is excreted through the urine.

HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP. . .WITH HONEY FOR “FLAVOR”

Many people who consume honey assume they are getting local honey made by bees. In the honey industry, however, it is industry stan­dard to label high fructose corn syrup as honey, with a small percentage of honey for flavor.⁹ It is cheaper this way.

Normally, stored nectar contains pollen; when the nectar turns into honey, the pollen remains as part of the final product. But ac­cording to Food Safety News, “The FDA isn’t checking honey sold here to see if it contains pollen.”¹⁰ They found that U.S. grocery stores are “flooded with Indian honey banned in Eu­rope as unsafe because of contamination with antibiotics, heavy metal and a total lack of pollen. . . .” Ironically, many people who have life-threatening honey allergies can readily eat this mass-produced, store-bought “honey” because of the lack of actual honey and pollen in the product.

Local honey is a highly beneficial food, antibacterial and full of enzymes. If obtained from a reliable source, local honey is a super­food. Industrial honey, on the other hand, is a highly processed form of sugar mostly derived from corn. The easiest way to know whether you are getting real honey is to buy locally, directly from a reputable producer.

“BEEF” AND “NATURAL FLAVORS”

Fast-food chains use industry standard fill­ers and additives “to enhance the flavor, texture and taste” of beef. A decade ago, consumers filed a class-action lawsuit against Taco Bell, suing the company to change its “seasoned beef” labeling to “taco meat filling” because tests showed that the filling’s content was less than 35 percent real beef.¹¹

As per the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), “taco meat filling” must contain at least 40 percent meat to be labeled as meat.11 Greg Creed, Taco Bell’s president and “chief concept officer” at the time of the lawsuit, re­leased a statement claiming that the company’s seasoned beef recipe in fact contained “88% quality USDA-inspected beef.”¹²

After receiving a great deal of critical press, the lawsuit was dropped, and Taco Bell spent millions of dollars in advertising trying to resuscitate its image. One of the company’s comeback tactics was to divulge the ingredients in its “seasoned beef” mixture. This disclosure proved that in addition to beef, the mixture included filler ingredients such as oats; vari­ous sugars (including cellulose, maltodextrin and dextrose); soy lecithin; citric acid; natural flavors—a label that in its own right can hide thousands of additives—including monosodium glutamate (MSG); another hidden MSG-type in­gredient called torula yeast¹³ (grown by feeding yeast on wood alcohols); cocoa (to add color); disodium inosinate and guanylate; lactic acid (a pH regulator and preservative); modified corn­starch (a thickener that may use not just corn but wheat, potato, rice or tapioca); salt; and sodium phosphates (leavening agent salts).^14,15

The company’s strategy backfired. Describ­ing Taco Bell’s “many, many weird artificial ingredients,” CBS reported that “the chain’s marketing staff hasn’t bothered to notice that its incomprehensibly technical ingredient list makes Taco Bell’s menu look like one big food science experiment.”¹⁶ Increasingly, discerning consumers know that the long list of ingredients is why fast-food beef doesn’t taste like grass-fed beef, why it doesn’t contain the nutrient content of grass-fed beef and why one will get hungry faster after eating this “beef.”

The term “natural flavors” is understood most easily by looking at how the American biotech company Senomyx (acquired by the privately owned Swiss company Firmenich in 2018) defines it—as an umbrella term that encompasses over eight hundred thousand ar­tificial and natural ingredients. Senomyx uses “proprietary taste science technologies to dis­ cover, develop, and commercialize novel flavor ingredients”¹⁷ and analyzes “millions of po­tential flavor ingredients annually.”18 Senomyx proudly declares, “We’re helping companies clean up their labels.”¹⁸

WHEN IS A TOMATO NOT A TOMATO?

The deeper you look at food, the more you find it may not be pure food. Examples include tomato sauces and tomato products that are not really just tomato.

Almost a third (31 percent) of the worldwide tomato supply comes from China,¹⁹ although ironically, tomatoes feature “sparsely” in the nation’s diet.²⁰ As of 2017, China ranked first in worldwide tomato production,¹⁹ shipping to over one hundred thirty countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany and Russia. From there, China’s tomato products are used by different brand names including Heinz, Unilever, McCormick and Nestle, which in turn ship to the United States, where these products dominate store shelves.²¹

The documentary The Empire of Red Gold explains China’s role in the global tomato in­dustry in detail.²¹ China pays workers for what they pick at a rate of 0.01 Euro per kilo, equaling half a penny for picking and packing a kilo (2.2 pounds) of tomatoes. The work involves pulling the tomato plant out of the ground, removing the tomatoes by shaking the plant, picking them up from the ground and putting them in a large sack. The tomatoes are genetically modified to be extremely durable, which means they do not bruise easily and can fall to the ground un­harmed. If you throw one of these tomatoes to the ground, it does not burst but instead bounces. This is a benefit to the low-income workers, who are often women who have babies strapped to their backs or have their small children walk­ing in the fields helping with the work. If the tomatoes are accidentally stepped on by these small children, it does not harm the tomatoes.

The Empire of Red Gold shows how sup­pliers of tomato manufacturing equipment in Parma, Italy set up production in China many years ago. Italians taught the Chinese how to run the Italian-designed equipment and produce the tomato product.²² The system was set up as a trade. Silvestro Pieracci, a former trader at the Gandolfi Group, recounts in the film that the deal was, “I give you the machines for production, you carry out your own production, and when you have finished, you give me the products to sell and recover the money for the machines that I have given you.”²¹

From that point, the tomato product is shipped in barrels, in shipping containers, overseas to Salerno, Italy. There, the Chinese concentrate is reconditioned by the Italians, who dilute it with water and add salt. Slate reported in 2007 that Italian consumers discovered, “[m]uch to their horror. . . that some of the paste on their shelves had come from China, where, as it was pointed out, there were lax controls on sanitation, pesticides, and heavy-metal con­tamination.”²²

Ordinarily, it takes just under thirteen and a half pounds of tomatoes to cook down to two pounds of tomato paste. Ma Zhenyong is the managing director of Jintudi, one of the biggest Chinese exporters of tomato products. In the documentary, he was giving the producer of the film a tour of the facility when the producer saw a white substance going into the tomato sauce in large quantities. When asked by a translator to identify the substance, the managing director said, “I cannot answer that. This is our recipe. I cannot talk about it. These additives are legiti­mate. We filed our recipe at the Chinese Goods Inspection and Examination Office. We only add what is filed there.”²¹

The white powder contained soybean powder, used as a thickener, as well as other ingredients. However, this substance does not appear on the label.²¹ Zhenyong said privately to the translator, “With regards to our produc­tion, 80% of the product is the raw material, tomato. In the remaining 20%, there is soybean (thickener), starch (thickener), maltose (sugar). The tomato paste represents 80%. And then, you know, the recipes are not fixed.”²¹ When the translator told the facility manager that he was only conveying the documentary producer’s question and that Zhenyong did not have to talk about it, Zhenyong stated privately to the translator, “The best thing is not to talk about the substances that are added.”²¹

The film’s producer has stated: “Accord­ing to my information, some boxes of Chinese concentrate contain up to 55% additives. It’s a method of lowering manufacturing costs since these are cheaper than tomatoes. The reason they can cut their products with soy is because of an agreement with their distributors. The entire production and distribution chain is complicit in this fraud. Only the consumer is fooled.”²¹

TRANSGLUTAMINASE (AKA “MEAT GLUE”)

Transglutaminase (TG)—also known as “meat glue”—is another hidden ingredient added to meat as well as other foods. Referred to in scientific publications as a protein “cross-linking” agent,²³ transglutaminase acts as a “catalyst” to bond any food containing protein.²⁴ Transglutaminase also serves as a tenderizer.

In addition to creating “restructured” beef and poultry (think chicken nuggets), meat glue serves as an ingredient in seafood and imitation crabmeat. There is also a part per million (ppm) allowance for transglutaminase in vegetable protein dishes and other meat substitutes as well as dairy products—processed cheese, hard cheese, cream cheese, yogurt and frozen des­serts—and even some bakery items.

The International Culinary Center benignly describes transglutaminase as “a naturally oc­curring enzyme in plants, animals, and bacte­ria.”²⁵ Transglutaminase is manufactured “either from the blood clotting factors of animals like cows and pigs or bacteria derived from plant extracts”²⁶ such as streptomyces; the latter is called “microbial transglutaminase.”27 Because animal-origin transglutaminase has an “ex­tremely high” manufacturing cost, microbial transglutaminase has become the food indus­try’s favored biotechnological tool.²⁷ The European Union (EU) banned animal-derived meat glue in 2010 due to safety concerns but still allows microbial transglutaminase.^28,29

The USDA states that it has “mandatory labeling requirements” for transglutaminase enzyme in meat, egg and poultry products, but journal­ists have noted that “they don’t always have to write the word out in such clear terms,” adding that for bread and dairy products, “the label may be [even] less clear.”²⁸ The German law firm Gorny Law has described the EU’s legal reasoning regarding labeling, stating that because transglu­taminase “is a processing aid in a legal sense,” it “is not an ingredient and under current law must not be labelled in the list of ingredients.”²⁴ The German lawyers also assert, “As soon as the substrate used during production is depleted, the enzyme will be inactive and does not func­tion in a technological manner in the finished foodstuff even though it may still be present.”²⁴

Chefs and meat processors are very familiar with transglutaminase as a common ingredient used to take lesser cuts of meats and literally glue them together for resale as a higher cut of meat or to “create a product of desirable size and form.”³⁰ Using meat glue also allows them to create checkerboard meat, with dark meat and light meat literally glued next to each other (think turkey bacon). So widely accepted is meat glue that the International Culinary Center’s blog for chefs (called Cooking Issues) refers to the practice of using transglutaminase as just as acceptable as any other enzyme-catalyzed cooking process, such as using starches to brew beer or rennet to make cheese.²⁵ However, European lawmakers involved in the 2010 decision to ban meat-derived transglutaminase stated that “consumers in Europe should be able to trust that they are buying a real steak or ham, not pieces of meat that have been glued together.”³⁰

The process of using meat glue is simple: Take otherwise discarded meat pieces, coat or sprinkle them with meat glue, mix well, roll the meat product in a sheet of plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight. The International Culinary Center praises this use of plastic wrap, stating: “The plastic wrap technique is great because there are no rules regulat­ing its use, and it is simple, fast and cheap; foods can be cooked in water directly in the plastic wrap.”²⁵

The result is a new cut of meat that is unrecognizable as an impos­tor. When you pull on the meat, it does not separate and responds as a normal piece of muscle tissue. Even when cut, the meat responds exactly like a piece of ordinary meat. In fact, the meat-glued product looks, feels, cooks and tastes like the cut of meat it is pretending to be—with the difference going unnoticed even by professional chefs. However, a “culinary physics” blog notes that, unlike gelatin, transglutaminase “doesn’t melt when heated.”³¹

Interestingly, when meat glue is bonding, it produces molecules of ammonia. A New York State Health Department document describes ammonia under the subheading of “Chemical Terrorism”—specifying that “Ammonia is also produced naturally from decomposition of organic matter, including plants, animals and animal wastes.”³² In the cooking world, the ammonia resulting from the meat glue process is seen as a plus. The rule of thumb that chefs use to assess whether meat glue (some forms of which have an unrefrigerated shelf life) is still good to use is to glue a few pieces of meat together and smell the meat while it is still moist. If the meat smells like a wet wool sweater or wet dog, it is still good. This smell comes from the ammonia.²⁵

The International Culinary Center grudg­ingly concedes that “some studies have shown that stomach enzymes have difficulty breaking down proteins after they have been bonded by TG.”²⁵ The Center goes on to say, “When TG-ases are improperly regulated in the body, they are associated with very bad things like the plaques in the brains of Alzheimer’s, Par­kinson’s, and Huntington’s disease patients as well as in the development of cataracts in the eyes, arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries), various skin disorders, etc.”²⁵ However, despite studies linking meat glue to attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) behaviors, gluten sensitivity,³³ celiac disease,³⁴ dementia³⁵ and other diseases,³⁶ the Center asserts that these problems arise from inherent physiological imbalances rather than consumption of meat-glued foods.²⁵

The 2010 book Ideas in Food³⁷—part guidebook, part recipe book—provides “de­tailed usage guides for the pantry staples of molecular gastronomy,” including “staples” such as transglutaminase and xantham gum.³⁸ The authors note how the “efficiency” of transglutaminase blends “can be improved with the addition of gelatin, caseinate, potassium chloride, and fiber,” which “are sometimes added. . . to facilitate the bonding process.” They add that “Salt and phosphates also increase the effectiveness of transglutaminase by increasing the availability of salt-soluble proteins.”³⁷

The addition of caseinate (a compound derived from casein) to trans­glutaminase blends is particularly concerning given the prevalence of casein intolerance, with celiac patients and autistic children the primary victims of this type of intolerance. Initially, avoiding casein may seem navigable through the elimination of milk products such as cheese, yogurt and ice cream—but when products such as medicine gel caps and “restruc­tured” meat and fish are added to the list of casein-containing products, avoidance becomes not only more complicated, but disheartening.

KNOW YOUR FARMER AND BUY LOCAL

In late 2019, the Weston A. Price Foundation launched its “50% Pledge,” encouraging people to spend at least 50 percent of their food dol­lars with local farmers and food artisans, especially those producing high quality eggs, poultry, meat, produce, raw milk and raw milk products.³⁹

With the growing attempts by industry to push consumers into eating synthetic and fake foods, and growing awareness of the “industry stan­dard” ingredients lurking in foods without appearing on food labels, this commitment to buying from high integrity, small- and medium-scale local producers is more important than ever. Buying from local farmers who keep animals on pasture, do not chemical-treat their vegetables and sell honey straight from the bees is the optimal way to feed your family.

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SIDEBARS

BIOTECH FLAVORS AND FETAL CELL LINES

According to the company profile on Bloomberg, Senomyx is an American biotechnology giant in the “consumer staples” sector that develops “flavor and fragrance molecules. . . used by consumer products companies to improve the taste and smell in processed foods and beverages, perfumes, and home care products.”⁴⁰ Although a cursory Internet search pulls up almost no information about the company itself, there are many entries about Senomyx’s controversial reliance on an embryonic human kidney cell line called HEK 293 (originally propagated from aborted fetal cells) to de­velop its synthetic ingredients.¹⁸

In 2011, CBS News noted that all but seven of the company’s then seventy-seven patents made reference to using the HEK 293 cell line, prompting CBS to conclude that “The company appears to be engineering HEK cells to function like the taste-receptor cells we have in our mouth.”⁴¹ The CBS report followed public calls to boycott Pepsi because of the soda company’s use of HEK 293-developed artificial sweeteners developed by Senomyx. CBS observed that “Senomyx’s work for Pepsi is one of the first times the cells have (potentially) been used to create a food or beverage.”⁴¹

At the time, the pro-life watchdog group Children of God for Life was also drawing the public’s attention to the numerous other companies partnering with Senomyx,⁴² including Kraft, Nestle, Solae and the Swiss company Firmenich. (Did Senomyx’s subsequent acquisition by Firmenich, which is the largest privately owned company in the world, have something to do with the vanishing of information about Senomyx online?) In 2020, the Irish Sentinel again drew attention to Senomyx’s use of the HEK 293 cell line and published a lengthy list of foods and beverages—ranging from instant noodles to energy drinks to coffee creamers to candy—that include flavoring agents developed with the human fetal cell line.⁴³

BEYOND RESTRUCTURED MEAT

Food scientists note that transglutaminase has many applications in the meat industry beyond its contributions to “restructured meat.” None provides reassurance to those eating a Wise Traditions diet. The authors of a 2014 review state: “The application of transglutaminase has created new technological opportunities for producing fine and coarse-minced sausages, Vienna sausages and smoked meat. Instead of high-quality meat, lower quality raw materials and additives, such as skimmed milk powder, soy or wheat flour, can now be used to manufacture these products. The impact of the enzyme on the proteins of these raw materials yields products which do not differ in appearance, texture, odour, taste and nutritional value from analogical products made exclusively of high quality meat.”²⁷

Transglutaminase has also helped the food industry produce processed meats with a lower fat content: “[I]n this case, sodium casein treated with transglutaminase replaces previously extracted animal fat.”²⁷ Not to worry, say food scientists. “Products with fillers do not differ in their organoleptic properties [in other words, taste and mouthfeel] from conventionally processed meat.”²⁷

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This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Summer 2021

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