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Alginate gels became famous when Ferran
Adrià used them to create “spherified”
foods. But alginates have been used for
decades to make the pimento strips
stuffed into olives. Alginate may seem
exotic, but everybody who has ever had
a martini has had some.
correspondingly high in cost). It is unfortunate
that their products tend to get lumped in the
public’s mind with cheaper and less satisfying
flavor compounds.
Under a Watchful Eye
Worries about the safety of food additives are
largely hangover effects from public scandals in
which ingredients were discovered to be tainted or
unsafe. Cyclamate, an artificial sweetener widely
used in diet soft drinks, was banned in the United
States in 1969 because of concerns that it could
cause cancer. In 1976, the FDA banned Red Dye
#2, a widely used artificial food coloring, again
because of suspicions that the compound is carcinogenic.
These high-profile actions undermined
public confidence in artificial food ingredients.
But a closer examination reveals that these
bans, if anything, demonstrate the vigilance of
food authorities. Cyclamate was banned in the
U.S. after a study showed it increased bladder
cancer in rats. The rats were fed a dosage that, in
human terms, is equivalent to drinking 350 cans
of diet soda a day. Because even the heaviest soda
addict could never consume diet drinks at that
rate, the studies were controversial. Cyclamate
remains approved in 55 countries, including
Canada and most of Europe. A later review by the
FDA of all available evidence concluded that
cyclamate is not linked to cancer. Yet it remains
banned in the United States because the FDA has
been unwilling to accept proposals to relist it.
Red Dye #2 has a similar history. The original
suspicion was raised by a Soviet study, eventually
replicated by the FDA, in which rats ate the dye at
a dosage equivalent to 7,500 cans of diet soda per
day. Despite the impossibility that a human could
ingest this dose, consumer advocate groups and
lobbyists called for a ban. The FDA responded by
banning Red Dye #2 even as it insisted that the
link was too tenuous to issue a finding that the dye
causes cancer. Noting that the link between the
compound and cancer was unproven, Canada and
most European countries have allowed Red Dye
#2 to remain in use.
These examples suggest that the FDA is quick to
ban suspect ingredients, even before credible
evidence shows that they are harmful. Canadian
and European food safety agencies have required
far more compelling evidence than the FDA has
before they ban a substance. It comes down to
a simple issue: are food regulations about politics
and suspicion, or are they about science?
Many people, however, have drawn the opposite
conclusion from these examples. Because
a handful of food additives have been banned,
they believe all food additives should be suspected
to be harmful until proved innocent.
Another common myth arises when pesticides
and other nonfood contaminants are confused
with legitimate food additives. The two are quite
different; additives are deliberately added, but
pesticide residues are accidental contaminants that
aren’t supposed to be in the food at all. Complicating
the issue, the organic food movement conflates
THE NATURAL HISTORY OF
The Gum Eater
At weights up to 20 kg / 44 lb, the kori bustard (Ardeotis kori)
is the heaviest flying bird in the world. It lives in Africa,
where it mostly walks on the ground, flies only sporadically,
and thus enjoys a lifestyle much like that of a turkey. Like
humans, the bird is an omnivore; it eats seeds, fallen fruit,
lizards, insects. It also eats one other food that is rather
unusual and that earned it the Afrikaans name gompou,
meaning gum eater.
food additives with pesticides and other nonorganic
farming practices. It is common to hear
members of the public, including chefs, say in
a single breath that they don’t want “chemical
additives, preservatives, or pesticides” in their
foodas if they are three of a kind.
Conversely, fans of organic food too often view
anything labeled “organic” as also “natural” and
“pure”and therefore better to eat. Some of the
ingredients in Modernist food sound like something
to be wary of because their exotic names
don’t sound “natural.” Yet, as we reported above,
large-scale studies have not shown any health
benefits for people who consume only organic
food. Moreover, being natural is a relative thing.
Many food products are highly processed and bear
no resemblance to their original statesee Good
Old-Fashioned Chemistry, page 256. Sugar, flour,
butter, heavy cream, and gelatin are kitchen
One of the kori bustard’s favored foods is the gum of the
acacia tree (right), the same gum that we know as gum
arabic. It’s unclear why the birds eat the gum. One theory
is that they digest the gum and derive nutrition from it, as
do vervet monkeys and many other African animals. But
another possibility is that the animal is really dining on a
protein-filled gel: the gum along with the array of proteinrich
insects that get trapped in the sticky substance.
staples refined by the processing of natural
ingredients. So are wine, vinegar, and hard liquors
like brandy and whiskey.
The resulting products are unrecognizable as
the starting form. White sugar is utterly unlike
molasses. Gelatin sheets used in desserts don’t
resemble the pig or fish skin that they are refined
fromthank goodness!
The same is true of many Modernist ingredientssee
The Newfangled Naturals, page 257.
Gum arabic is made from the sap of a tree, and
locust bean gum comes from, yes, the locust bean.
Most hydrocolloids, in fact, have their origins in
either plants or bacteria. Agar, alginate, and
carrageenan come from seaweed. Pectin is made
from fruit skin (mainly that of oranges squeezed
for orange juice). Xanthan gum and gellanjust
like yogurt and vinegarare derived through
fermentation by bacteria.
252 VOLUME 1 · HISTORY AND FUNDAMENTALS
FOOD AND HEALTH 253