[Fine Chemicals] A rundown of 6 common food thickeners that are relatively safe
Gum arabic is a natural plant gum taken from the acacia tree, a legume, where it forms from the tree's sap as it congeals. The refined powder form of gum arabic is easier to use. It basically produces no calories and is a good water-soluble dietary fiber; in the large intestine it can be broken down into beneficial cellulose, which fits well with what health foods are supposed to be. It has good stability. Its high-fiber nature makes it a great raw material for food additives. Gum arabic is mainly used in making gum base, chewing gum, soft and hard candies, frozen foods, beverages, bread, and in cooking and baking.
Sodium caseinate
It's made from high-quality milk from plateau yaks, refined through a scientific production process. It contains all the essential amino acids the body needs. It's a nutritional supplement and a protein, and also an emulsifying stabilizer and thickener. In the food industry it has moisturizing, freshness-preserving, aroma-preserving, and quality-improving effects, and is widely used in meat products, baked goods, beverages, pharmaceuticals, tobacco, cosmetics, and daily chemicals. Sodium caseinate has foaming and emulsifying properties and a distinctive aroma. It's mainly used in minced meat products to increase the meat's elasticity and water-holding capacity and improve meat utilization.
Carrageenan
Carrageenan, also called Irish moss, is a hydrophilic colloid extracted from red algae seaweed through marine biotechnology. Its chemical structure consists of polysaccharide calcium, potassium, sodium, and ammonium salts. Carrageenan has the properties of a soluble dietary fiber; after being broken down in the body it can form a soluble complex with fibrin, becoming an energy source for probiotics. As a good gelling agent, carrageenan can replace the usual agar, gelatin, and pectin, and is mainly used in beverages, ice cream, and candy.
Xanthan gum
Xanthan gum is a purely natural biosynthetic gum made mainly from starch through microbial culture, fermentation, and then extraction and drying. Its main components are mannose and gluconic acid, making it more environmentally friendly. Xanthan gum is currently the internationally leading bio-gum that combines thickening, suspending, emulsifying, and stabilizing in one, with the best performance. It's mainly used in: fruit juice drinks, ice cream, soy sauce, oyster sauce, frozen desserts, baked goods, and seasoning. Instant noodles, sausage, canned meat, cake, bread, and dehydrated foods. In addition, agar and pectin are both purely natural, made from seaweed and the medium in plant cell membranes.
The vast majority of these food thickeners are not digested or absorbed by the body after entering it—like pectin, guar gum, carrageenan, and so on—and their effect is similar to dietary fiber. A few thickeners, like gelatin, are mainly protein and get broken down into amino acids during digestion, participating in body metabolism; they are nutrients the body can absorb and use. So no matter which thickener it is, none of them have anything to do with blood viscosity, and you can eat them without worry.
Watch out for misuse of industrial glue
The state has strict rules for making food-grade and medical-grade gelatin: it must use fresh, strictly quarantined animal bones or raw hides that haven't undergone any chemical treatment, and it must be dried and crushed on a fully enclosed assembly line. But in some shady workshops run by unscrupulous traders, the situation goes far beyond what we'd imagine.
In Fucheng, Hebei, a reporter saw on an open-air processing yard bags and piles of blue thread-like leather scraps everywhere. These blue threads and industrial raw hides were actually the raw material for making gelatin.
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