Why I am a Vegan

[BlatzAdict]

I always feel like the carrageenan carcinogen scare is to get people wary of eating healthy. I mean, we've used carrageenan in baby formulas for a long time - why is it more of an outrage that we put it in soy milk?

Here is some more information that might prove current carrageenan manufacturing standards are not okay.  One of the problems with Organic is that a lot of times you can have GMO corn or chemicals and oils and nutrients derived from gmo vegetables that are then blended or mixed into a product labeled as organic.





"Carrageenan—Another Ingredient that Should Never have Been Approved

As mentioned earlier, once the Cornucopia Institute began reviewing carrageenan, a seaweed derivative used as a stabilizer, it became clear that just like Martek's DHA/ARA oils, it does not belong in truly organic foods. This is a timely issue, as carrageenan is currently up for a sunset reevaluation by the NOSB. (By law, all synthetic ingredients in organics must be reevaluated every five years.) According to Mark:

"When carrageenan was first reviewed in 1995, the NOSB, as required by law, looked at the potential environmental and health impacts after examining a technical review produced by three experts with corporate agribusiness ties: Dr. Steve Harper, director of R&D at Small Planet Foods (now owned by General Mills), Dr. Richard Theuer, a vice-president of R&D at Beech Nut, and Dr. Stephen Taylor, professor of food science at the University of Nebraska and defender of genetic engineering. Dr. Taylor has published studies on genetically engineered organisms (GMO) and allergy risks, co-authored by agribusiness scientists at DuPont and Pioneer Hi-Bred (manufacturers of chemicals and organic seed). 
This technical review hardly mentions some potential serious health impacts from degraded carrageenan, failing to cite any of the research to inform the board that historically, as much as 25 percent of carrageenan on the market was categorized as degraded. Current research shows all types of carrageenan can degrade in the body and can create serious known health impacts. 
A number of peer-reviewed published papers that should have been cited indicate that degraded carrageenan causes inflammation and can cause serious intestinal abnormalities. Degraded carrageenan is also considered a possible carcinogen, and it's in organic foods! There is no doubt that carrageenan is an inflammatory agent. In fact, in testing anti-inflammatory drugs, laboratory animals are given carrageenan to produce inflammatory symptoms. There's no secret in the medical community that this is a problem. 
The technical review also failed to document the known environmental hazards from discharge of alkaline water, the deleterious impacts of seaweed farming to coral reefs, coastal ecosystems, and mangroves. By law, organics is supposed to do no harm. By law, these environmental externalities needed to be considered. Now, carrageenan is up for review again this year. As before, no negative environmental impacts and no human health threats were recognized by the NOSB's industry-friendly handling subcommittee, which unanimously again recommends its approval. 
We must oppose the relisting of carrageenan and assure that it is taken out of organic foods. It shouldn't be in any food – conventional or organic. We need to be careful about reviews of all synthetics and organics. We need to re-review them, and the weight of your voice will help us make this argument.""

Source: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articl...foods.aspx


Supplementary Research: http://www.drweil.com/diet-nutrition/foo...enan-safe/

"When I first wrote about carrageenan on this site 10 years ago, I reported that some animal studies had linked degraded forms of carrageenan (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.)  "