Question from Joan

I just found out that CARRAGEENAN is in a lot of the organic foods I buy. My daughter was so excited because she found Applegate turkey w/no hormones and antibiotics but I saw that it has carrageenan. When I researched it on line, it is confusing if it is actually harmful. Do you have any info on this? thanks so much

Debra’s Answer

I’ve not been concerned about carrageenan since years ago I found out it is a seaweed extract. Seaweed is simply boiled to extract the carrageenan. When I was in grade school, as a science project we boiled seaweed we collected at the beach and the water turned gummy. That’s about what happens with carrageenan.

But as carrageenan is now used in thousands and thousands of food products, it has become an industrialized ingredient–not hardly in it’s natural state, more like refined salt and refined sugar. Salt in it natural state is essential to life, but refined it becomes something else altogether.

Here are some articles about the potential health effects of carrageenan:

This brings up an important point I made in my book Toxic Free

Things can come from a “natural” animal-vegetable-mineral source (not petroleum), however, once it has gone through an industrial process, it is no longer in it’s natural state.

And then these industrialized natural ingredients are usually harmful to health.

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