A close inspection of the nutrition label on most processed foods will usually turn up—among other disturbingly-named ingredients whose function is unclear—something known as “hydrolyzed soy protein” or “hydrolyzed wheat protein”.
What is it, and why is it added to so many processed food products?
What Is Protein, Anyway?
“Protein” is a generic term for an animal or plant tissue made out of individual proteins. These individual “proteins” are just long chains of amino acids linked together, end to end.
There are 20 amino acids in our genetic code, each an individual molecule with its own shape—and the sequence of amino acids in a protein determines its three-dimensional shape. Our cells can build anything from collagen to digestive enzymes out of the correct sequence of amino acids!
A short protein is called a “peptide”, but there’s no set number of amino acids under which the term is used. Calling a protein a “peptide” is like calling a person “short”: it’s a relative judgment.
Why Is There So Much “Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein”?
Now that we know proteins are just strings of amino acids, we can understand what “hydrolyzed vegetable protein” is.
Note that it’s no longer legal to use the term “hydrolyzed vegetable protein” on a nutrition label in the USA: the source of the protein must be listed, e.g. “hydrolyzed soy protein”, “hydrolyzed wheat protein”. (Source: USDA Flavorings FAQ.)
The process of extracting seed oils from soybeans or corn (a disturbing series of chemical reactions involving hexane, taking place in chemical plants that look a lot like oil refineries) leaves behind dehulled, defatted soy or corn meal. Typically this mush is fed to cattle…but since it’s cheap and produced by the ton due to massive, destructive subsidies for industrial monocrop agriculture, there is great financial incentive to figure out how to feed it to humans.
Wheat protein is simpler to produce: since gluten (the collective name for wheat proteins, including both glutelins and gliadins) doesn’t dissolve in water, wheat flour is simply washed with water to dissolve away the starch. (How it’s done, featuring lots of delicious phrases like “homogenized slurry”.)
As one might expect from the name “gluten”, the result is…gluey. (This is what gives bread it’s stretchiness.) As anyone who’s ever used nutritional yeast by mistake, instead of baking yeast, can attest, the result is a heavy, indigestible solid with the approximate density of a brick and the consistency of hardened wood glue. And wheat flour dissolved in water makes an excellent adhesive for putting up posters…or even wallpaper.
This lack of digestibility is among the many reasons why wheat protein, in addition to all its disruptive effects on intestinal function, is the lowest-quality protein commonly available. (Other reasons include a deficiency of the essential amino acids lysine and methionine.) Whole wheat protein scores only 0.25-0.42 on the PDCAAS, with beef protein at 0.92, and eggs and milk at 1.0. Corn protein isn’t any better: it scores between 0.22 and 0.46. (Even soy scores a 1.0 on the PDCAAS—though soy products cause other issues I don’t have space to discuss here.)
Therefore, fake vegetarian meat substitutes like seitan, veggieburgers, and Tofurky—which usually use gluten to help simulate the texture of meat—are using the most biologically disruptive and lowest-quality protein available.
What Is “Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein”?
The protein we’ve extracted can be spray-dried into “textured vegetable protein”, which would require another article to explain…
…or the protein can be “hydrolyzed”. Hydrolysis is basically chemical digestion on an industrial scale: the protein is dropped into a vat of sulfuric acid, boiled for several hours to over a day in order to break down the proteins, after which lye is added to raise the pH back to neutral. (Yum!)
I’ve been asked “If our stomachs can digest protein in a few hours, how come it has to be boiled in sulfuric acid for up to a day?”
Answer: our stomach isn’t just an acid vat. Both our stomach and our intestines contain proteolytic enzymes, like pepsin and trypsin—chemicals specifically tuned to break down bonds between amino acids. However, when hydrolyzing protein on an industrial scale, sulfuric acid and heat is generally cheaper than enzymes.
The longer a protein is hydrolyzed, the more that big, long, gluey proteins (like wheat gluten) will be broken down into shorter proteins—or even into individual amino acids.
Why Is Protein Hydrolyzed, and Why Is Hydrolyzed Protein In So Much Of Our Food?
If you’re thinking this all seems like a lot of work for not much benefit, you’re not alone. Hydrolyzed protein usually shows up near the end of the ingredient list: why would food companies go to so much trouble just to add a tiny bit of protein to their food?
The answer is simple: when we hydrolyze a protein down to free amino acids, one of the amino acids we get is glutamic acid, known as glutamate in its anionic form. And since wheat gluten in particular contains a lot of glutamine, hydrolyzed wheat protein will contain a lot of free glutamate.
For more than you probably wanted to know about glutamate vs. glutamine and their metabolism, try these articles and papers:
Glutamine: The Essential “Non-Essential” Amino Acid
Ivy Greenwell, LE Magazine, September 1999J. Nutr. April 1, 2000 vol. 130 no. 4 978S-982S
Intestinal Glutamate Metabolism
Peter J. Reeds, Douglas G. Burrin, Barbara Stoll and Farook Jahoor
And free glutamate is the molecule that plugs into the taste receptor we call “umami”…
…the same taste receptor that’s tickled by the abundant free glutamate in soy sauce, Parmesan and Roquefort cheese, Vegemite and Marmite, fish sauce, nori, kombu, and MSG.
Glutamine And Glutamate Are Not Gluten…But “Hydrolyzed Wheat Protein” Can Still Be Gluten
It’s easy to get confused due to the similar names, so I’ll restate the point: glutamine (and glutamate, its carboxylate anion) is not the same as gluten!
Gluten is the collective term for the proteins found in wheat and other gluten grains, like barley, rye, and triticale. Glutamine and glutamate are forms of a single amino acid. They’re found in almost every protein in the world, and they can’t cause a celiac or allergic reaction by themselves.
However, “hydrolyzed wheat protein” can still contain the peptides which affect zonulin signaling and cause problems for celiacs and the allergic…it all depends on the degree of hydrolysis. I wouldn’t risk it myself.
(Note that another name for “hydrolyzed wheat protein” is “glutamine peptides”, often found in sports nutrition products like whey protein. Beware!)
What Is “Umami?”
The easiest way to explain “umami” is “that yummy taste that’s in all the condiments I just listed”, usually described as “savory” or “meaty”. But why would humans have a taste sensor for free glutamate?
The answer becomes clearer when we realize that all the foods in the above list are heavily processed products of agricultural civilization. if we look down the list of free glutamate-containing foods until we find non-processed foods available to Paleolithic humans, we find shellfish (100-200), meat, fish, and milk (20-70).
In other words, we find sources of good, complete protein. So it’s clear that our taste sensors for “umami” evolved to sense protein…
…that we’ve discovered how to trick our protein sensor by creating lots of free glutamate out of things like seaweed and hard cheese…
…and, most recently, hydrolyzed soy, corn and wheat protein.
You’ll note that many other popular neolithic foods contain free glutamate far in excess of their protein content…which, I suspect, is one reason we enjoy their taste. Peas, corn, tomatoes, potatoes, grape juice, and cured ham contain far more free glutamate than meat or shellfish…and green tea contains almost as much glutamate as soy sauce! (Table, again.)
Conclusion
- “Hydrolyzed vegetable protein” is a flavor enhancer…
- …because it stimulates our umami taste receptors, just like soy sauce, Parmesan cheese, or MSG.
- However, it’s much cheaper than real food, because the USA heavily subsidizes the production of corn, soy, and wheat…
- …and, in the case of soy and corn, it’s made from a byproduct of soy and corn oil manufacturing that would otherwise be fed to cattle.
And that’s why we find “hydrolyzed wheat protein” and “hydrolyzed soy protein” in so many processed “foods”.
Live in freedom, live in beauty.
JS
The Recommended Reading page continues to grow…and US residents can help support gnolls.org (at no cost) by making Amazon.com purchases through any of my affiliate links.
Most interesting. Is soy lecithin a hydrolyzed soy protein? With my limited knowledge, I would suppose not. All the same, I increasingly find it listed as an ingredient in a range of things you find in a supermarket, including butter!
Nice work! It brought a smile to my face when reflecting on the verdent imagery so often associated with veg*anism.
My disgust at what passes as (processed) food for veg*ans far surpasses any digust I have experienced in the killing and butchering of animals (although I've only hunted fish and birds).
There is a veg*an argument that if we could but see what is involved in meat-eating we'd all go veg*an overnight.
If veg*ans could see the chemistry involved in their diet, I'm sure they would recoil in horror. Everything from the pesticides, fungicides, herbicides and insecticides of monocropping, through to the hexane based extraction of seed oils, and on to the boiling of proteins in vats of sulfuric acid for hours at a time!
I mistrust long food chains – be they physical or transactional. It is one thing having farmers and butchers, and then traders and other middlemen involved in your food chain – but putting chemists and food scientists in to the mix as well is rather disconcerting.
Better to reduce the time from 'hoof to tooth' as there is usually greater transparency and less chance of adulteration and deterioration in food quality.
Like a lot of what you publish this is disturbing…and enlightening. I give you credit not for the disturbing part (that’s due to the ag and food science industries) but definitely for the enlightening part.
Thanks for this great piece. Yet another ingredient to be on high alert for when people go shopping for “food”.
Pete,
Soy lecithin is lecithin derived from soy. Lecithin is an emulsifier and therefore you’ll find it in many products that involve an oil-and-water mixture: butter, chocolate, probably salad dressings, etc. Lecithin is one of the things that is responsible for egg yolks allowing you to make mayonnaise, and serves a beneficial role in the diet (choline, a substance that is of great value to liver health, is a component of lecithin).
The question is whether there’s anything else piggy-backing with the soy lecithin (eg, soy proteins), and unfortunately I don’t know that. I’ve been operating on the assumption that it’s generally safe.
@ Ray Pete: I’m looking forward to hearing the answer to that, too. I checked my whey protein the other day, and the only additive is soy lecithin.
Wow, I had known for a while that processed food often had the right mix of sweet, salty, and fatty to make out taste buds sing, but I didn’t know that all that hydrolyzed protein was having a similar effect. Yeesh, combine that with the incomplete and unsatisfying nature of “snack” food (as per your other article), and it’s a wonder that any of us can put the box of crackers down.
Nice work! Your descriptions are so clean.
I’m glad you wrote this article actually because I’ve just so happened to have some questions about hydrolized products lately.
First, how much is too much? Clearly some amount of free amino acids are perfectly natural. I’m guessing glutamate is even formed to some degree in slow cooked soups by the process of hydrolytic cleavage (the separating of amino acids by trapped moisture) but I’m not entirely sure if the amino acids are broken down far enough. I’m not sure how much glutamate would actually be released or how long it might take.
Second, I wonder how much free amino acids it takes to cause the nerve damage (migrains, diziness, memory loss) that can be caused by eating these products.
Third, prepared gelatin is essentially hydrolyzed collagen. Does this have the same unami-stimulating, nerve damaging effect?
another great article, J — and very timely! my husband, MIL and i are visiting the son’s farm (VERY small, with pastured poultry, goats and pigs). MIL owns wheat farms in KS, and WILL NOT believe there’s anything wrong with the stuff….
Oops, typo. Should have said, “if the proteins are broken down far enough.”
JS, great job as usual!
@Peggy, I believe what JS was conveying was not that the amino acid glutamate was dangerous on its own (aside from tricking our taste buds into consuming something lacking in nutrition and possibly toxic), but that there might still be peptides or longer chain proteins not completely broken down in the processes that are still present in the “food”. It is those gluten proteins that may still be present that are dangerous to all of us potentially, celiacs and gluten-sensitive individuals particularly.
Our umami taste receptor presumably evolved for the specific function to lead us to consume foods that naturally contain glutamate. Glutamate is an amino acid that acts as a signal for all the other nutrients in the food (meat, shellfish, seaweed, etc.). Bone broths are rich in collagen, and thus rich in glutamate. Thus, they’re the real deal (without gluten), and should be consumed daily for optimal health. In fact, the next time you make bone stock, add a few strips of kombu (kelp) into the pot to extract yet more umami, and of course more minerals as well.
Hi Aaron,
Trust all is well with you.
“add a few strips of kombu (kelp) into the pot to extract yet more umami, and of course more minerals as well.”
I’ve never done this…do you still use vinegar when you use the Kombu?
Thank you.
Marc
@Marc,
Yes, about 1/4 cup of raw apple cider vinegar. I’ve read that it helps extract the minerals from the bones. I also throw scraps of wilted vegetables and carrot tops and the like in there, too.
regarding bone broth, I can attest that if you cook it long enough say, 24+ hrs, there is a lot of free glutamate. Just like msg it upsets my stomach. This is a problem for me, since I want broths for minerals and gut health. I would love to know if anyone has a suggestion for reducing that kind of sensitivity.
Superb and comprehensive post! There’s more to this industrial/agricultural additive than the name implies. I’m left with the savory desire to eat the real deal instead – shellfish, meat, fish.
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Gluey is def the correct description there. I once made the mistake of putting wheat noodles down my disposal (long time ago, very long) and then I spent the next several hrs taking apart the plumbing and cleaning out the pipes. What a sticky nasty mess!
Cheers
Pete Ray:
Lecithin is a slurry of fatty residues like phospholipids, glycolipids, choline, phosphoric acid, glycerol, etc. Commercial soy lecithin is basically “the fatty gunk left over when you refine it out of soybean oil”…
…which isn’t all bad, because a significant amount of the “gunk” is phosphadityl choline! Sadly, soy lecithin is probably the major source of choline in the American diet.
However, while quantities will be minute, it cannot be 100% guaranteed that there won’t be a few stray protein molecules in it…so people with strong allergies or sensitivities to soy could still have an issue.
Asclepius:
Absolutely! When people say they’re trying to avoid highly processed foods, I tell them “Bread is a highly processed food.” And fake meat is far worse…as you say, the industrial processing required to create veg*an “foods” out of birdseed is complex, intense, and environmentally destructive.
Even the worst industrial meat products, like hot dogs, are simple in comparison: they’re just shredded meat, flavored and pressed into shape. (No acid vats required.) And even the much-maligned “pink slime” isn’t dipped in any vats of sulfuric acid: it’s just sprayed with puffs of ammonia gas as a disinfectant.
Joel:
Hydrolyzed soy and wheat protein aren’t the worst of the industrial food additives by far…but they’re a solid reminder of the consequences of heavy grain subsidies, which is a huge financial incentive to replace real food with industrial products derived from birdseed (aka “heart-healthy whole grains”).
Andrea, Marilyn:
Quite correct. As I said above, any proteins remaining in soy lecithin should be in vanishingly small amounts. I don’t worry about it myself. However, there is a movement to other sources of lecithin, like sunflower seeds, in order to label products “soy-free” for the growing number of people with diagnosed allergies.
Beowulf:
Exactly. Hydrolyzed protein is basically a way to create the same taste as MSG (“umami”) without the ingredient label scaring people.
Peggy:
I don’t know enough about glutamate/glutamine chemistry to make any judgments about “how much free glutamate is too much”. I do know that our blood levels are highly regulated, our intestines suck up something like 90% of dietary glutamate and glutamine, and they also convert glutamate into glutamine (via glutamine synthetase), so it’s likely to be a lot.
Gelatin has a very low amount of free glutamate. It's low in glutamine by comparison to other meat proteins, let alone seed proteins. Furthemore, the proteins aren't fully hydrolyzed, because otherwise they wouldn't gel. This article on gelatin chemistry goes into the details.
More soon!
JS
tess:
Wheat protein really is of remarkably low quality. There's a reason that wheat and beef always went together in the Neolithic European cultural package: wheat absolutely will not support human life on its own, and requires supplemental animal protein.
Aaron:
Thank you! I'm glad my explanations meet your approval for scientific rigor.
And thanks for the clarification: that's indeed what I was trying to get across. Anything with “hydrolyzed wheat protein” is not guaranteed to be “gluten-free”…and unprocessed foods that naturally contain free glutamate are both nutritious and delicious.
I take it, from your love of bone broth and umami, that you're not on the “OMG EXCITOTOXINS!!1!!1!” bus
Nick:
I honestly have no idea: perhaps someone else can contribute?
Marty:
Absolutely. It's not a ubiquitous ingredient for no reason: ingredient costs for industrial foods are calculated to the fractional cent.
Daniel:
If the pasta dried in that state, you probably would have had to replace some pipes!
Thanks, everyone, for contributing. There's a rule of thumb to be applied: if there's an ingredient on the label you don't understand, it's either a preservative, a stabilizer, a flavor enhancer, or it's cheaper than food. In the case of hydrolyzed protein, it's both a flavor enhancer and cheaper than food.
JS
Funny, just yesterday at work, a colleague who is paleo curious and tries to do the right thing was reading the ingredient list on the back of something or other that he'd got for lunch. “Hydrolysed something or other”, which he said, “that doesn't sound good … sounds like MSG in disguise”, or words to that effect. How close he was!
I know many paleos have a distrust of food that comes in packaging, but I wonder whether we really should be a more united on this one. Food that comes in packages is processed. We don't eat processed food.
There is a real freedom in eating real food. J said it really well the other day on another thread where I talked about my ingredient principle – do the ingredients reflect the description of the food? J said that real food IS ingredients, and how true that is.
Back to the article – very useful, J. Covert processing in the ingredients really is something to watch out for. I'm pretty sure I mentioned it before, but “meat glue” is something to be increasingly aware of. Transglutaminase, if anyone wants to look it up – your next marbled steak might just be frankenfood!
JS,
kudo. you have a way to explain complex matters that is easy to understand for laymen.
i also wonder about soy lecithin. it is everywhere, even in high end chocolate. i supposed lecithin from eggs are too expensive?
i switched just dry roasted my own cacao (beans). it tastes bitter but i have acquired a taste for it.
i also use kelp in broth for taste & minerals. also since Hubby does not like sea vegetables. this is the way to sneak it in. XD.
is MSG naturally occuring in some food, like kelp?
i find the “umami” taste in my home made broth has more body, more savory. the umami from added MSG is a bit empty & quite salty.
regards,
hydrolized vegetable protein sounds a lot like the equivalent of MTBE in oil refinery to me.
Paul:
Your co-worker is essentially correct: it's MSG without the sodium.
From what I understand, the “meat glue” issue is far more prevalent in restaurants and pre-packaged meat. It's difficult to make something that looks exactly like a raw ribeye, or even a raw chuck roast…but it's very easy to make a homogenous chunk of meat that, after being grilled, can be sold as a “steak”.
That's why I don't buy any meat sold in opaque tubes, or any of the pre-packaged “bacon-wrapped filet mignon in a plastic mold” type of stuff I see in the freezer case. I figure it's guaranteed to be made out of glued-together tenderloin tips — at best.
pam:
Exactly. Soy is heavily subsidized and cheap, therefore soy lecithin is cheap.
MSG is just free glutamate attached to a sodium ion (Na+). In water, it dissociates into Na+ and glutamate, which is why MSG tastes salty (the Na+ ion). In other sources, like kelp, the glutamate is not attached to a sodium atom, so it doesn't taste salty…but it still has umami, because that comes from the glutamate.
Clear?
JS
Great post! It's been over a year eating unprocessed foods, a year that no longer required reading labels with mystery ingredients. People seem to focus on calories and fat content and ignore the ingredient list. Ludicrous descriptors on the front of box like 'Heart healthy canola' or 'low fat soy protein' are just wrong.
@Nick, this article discusses glutamate and in the comments Dr. Eades responds to a question like your's … may be an issue with calcium: Savory Monosodium Glutamate
Leslie:
That's a great article by Dr. Eades, and the discussion in the comments is good too. He doesn't update much any more, but there's a trove of good information in his older stuff.
Note that I had to fix the URL myself…something's wrong with the comment/forum software that causes it to screw up links when it tries to shorten the text with ellipses. I'll try to find the problem as soon as I'm less busy!
JS
Amazingly informative article! Good job, Stanton.
I was shopping for a natural body wash and lotion, Canus Goat’s Milk Body Wash and lotion to be precise. I noticed they offer a version of their product that adds in hydrolyzed wheat protein for added moisturizing.
My question is, do you know if using hydrolyzed wheat protein in cosmetics such as lotion and body wash is safe? Or is it just as bad for you as eating it?
Thanks.
[...] Glutamine, free glutamate, hydrolized why protein. Same as MSG? [...]
Way back in my pre-Paleo days, I used to use dehydrated TVP (soaked) as a meat stretcher. I remember the back of the bag saying it was hydrolyzed vegetable protein.
You’ll also see that term listed on the backs of frozen burritos, and frozen pizzas in any store, because they’re full of SOY and not actual meat. The government says as long as they don’t advertise meat on the front, no amount of meat has to be in the middle.
Your timing could not be more perfect. Here’s to meat glue.
Zachary:
Thanks for the support!
Rubbing hydrolyzed wheat protein on your body is probably a lot like rubbing bread on your body: I doubt it'll harm you unless you're allergic, but I don't see any reason to do so. There are plenty of great products out there that don't contain it!
(Also, I confess I'm not clear how a protein can “moisturize”…perhaps I don't spend enough time with cosmetics!)
Wenchypoo:
TVP is a different beast entirely — but it's possible that they were adding HVP to the TVP in order to give it some umami.
And it's definitely the case that convenience food is chock-full of non-food like HVP and TVP. If people are in enough of a hurry to voluntarily eat a microwave burrito, they're unlikely to care what's in it…
…which (if I recall correctly) is mostly soybean oil by calories, with wheat flour coming next.
jordan:
Great article! I'm not at all surprised that catered “filet mignon” is usually glued-together tenderloin tips. There's only a few pounds of filet in a side of beef — and I've always wondered how so many places can serve “filet mignon” when there's so little of it to go around.
JS
[...] What Are “Hydrolyzed Soy Protein” And “Hydrolyzed Wheat Protein,” And Why Are They In Everyt… [...]
[...] article: hydrolyzed recipe: rhubarb crunch [...]
[...] What Are “Hydrolyzed Soy Protein” And “Hydrolyzed Wheat Protein,” And Why Are They In Everyt… – A post from Gnolls.org, which I have come to really love. J. Stanton makes thorough, well-researched, well-reasoned cases in all of his posts. This is a great piece explaining these nasty food-like products that you’ll find in so many packaged, processed foods. [...]
Wow…I never stop learning and being amazed at what our government aloes the food industry (and drug industry to sell us medicine to fix the results) to do!
This is a fantastick site!!!
Off the direct topic, but related, I was looking for a good fish stock to use with a Bouillabasse last Sunday. I found one which proudly declared that it was “free of artificial flavour enhancers*” … where the * on the back of the packet stated: “Does not contain MSG”. The ingredients, however, listed, “Yeast Extract”, which is technically a live culture although far from natural once produced. Not liars, but close.
madaline:
I'm glad you find it helpful! Do stick around.
Paul:
“Yeast extract” usually has a lot of free glutamate in it. It's one reason Vegemite and Marmite are so popular.
JS
You mention seitan in passing. Seitan, of course, isn’t hydrolyzed; it’s just wheat with all the water-soluble materials washed away in cold water.
I rather like seitan–although its bioavailability is admittedly low.
What I find fascinating is that I have come across two cases of people who claimed to be gluten-intolerant but could eat seitan with no ill effects. Since seitan is pretty much nothing but gluten, that’s more than a little odd. (In both cases, they were unaware that seitan was a wheat product! Hilarious.)
Now, there’s a couple of possibilities here. Either their gluten intolerance is all in their heads, or maybe the problem isn’t really gluten. Could it be that some other component of wheat–one closely associated with gluten, but water soluble–is the real culprit in “gluten intolerance?”
… or the devil confuses them.
David I:
I think it's most likely that the people you encountered aren't actually gluten-intolerant.
Note that, strictly speaking, the gliadins (not the glutelins) are the peptides with the effects on zonulin signaling, and possibly opiate receptors. However, wheat protein is collectively referred to as “gluten” even though it's composed of both glutenins and gliadins. It's a bit confusing!
Neither glutelins not gliadins are strictly water-soluble…gliadins are alcohol-soluble, and glutelins are soluble in weak acids or alkalis. And seitan contains both.
I concede that I don't know enough about the chemistry to say what other minor proteins might be water-soluble (and therefore, perhaps, washed away during the making and processing of seitan). However, again, I think “not really gluten-intolerant” is the most likely explanation.
Note that this doesn't mean it's good for them (or for anyone) to eat seitan!
JS
I have always been skeptical when I read the list of ingredients from “healthier” choices when I discover hydrolyzed vegetable protein on the list. You have gone much further in your research explaining that it’s almost pure economics why companies add this to our food because it’s cheap and abundant!
mark:
Absolutely! Another great example is PGPR in chocolate…it's cheaper than cocoa butter.
JS
PGPR.. sigh. Both glad and sad to find out about this. I told my husband “They're fucking with the chocolate now”. Happy that my chocolate intake generally falls to a few cacao nibs occasionally.
[...] “What are ‘hydrolyzed soy protein’ and ‘hydrolyzed wheat protein’ and why are…” from gnolls.org This entry was posted in Workout of the Day by Todd. Bookmark the permalink. [...]
[...] get it in that tiny little packet? This is what’s in the seasoning “HAM” packet: Hydrolyzed Soy Protein (omg, click orange link to read what it is!), maltodextrin, salt, artificial flavorings (including [...]
Very interesting article. I have recently had my gall bladder removed and noticed an instinctive lack of desire for highly processed foods. Although I don’t consider myself a vegan, I find myself gravitating toward whole foods rather than processed.
I think your article, although obviously pointing out the pitfalls of a highly processed vegatarian proten source, is aimed at the vegan diet, should also take into account a non vegan diet. How many of us would want to eat bologna or hot dogs on a regular basis and call that a good protein source? Just like whole foods, I can see the benefits to a meat diet as long as it is fresh and unprocessed. I’ll take a good pot roast over a hot dog any day.
Or hell, I just get the stone ground chocolate most of the time now anyways. I find I prefer it over the other kinds now.
E Craig:
Good chocolate (Lindt/Ghirardelli/etc.) doesn't have PGPR in it…it's the cheap stuff in candy bars that's almost universally stretched with PGPR.
Marcus:
If you read my other articles (check the index), it'll become clear that I'm very much pro-meat as well as pro-whole-foods in general — so I absolutely agree with you that a good roast is where we want to be getting our protein.
However, there is plenty of HVP/HSP/HWP in meat-based processed foods…again, because it's a way to sneak in something equivalent to MSG without actually saying “MSG” on the label.
Jen W:
AFAIK, PGPR is an ingredient that must be disclosed individually on the label, and can't be hidden under “natural flavoring”, “artificial flavoring”, or some other catch-all. So you should be safe if you read the label.
JS