Hidden Ingredients

One of the reasons I cook my own food is so I can control the ingredients.

Pre-packaged foods (and some herbal teas) contain flavorings - natural and artificial. I avoid artificial flavorings because they're chemicals. I avoid natural flavorings because they can be derived from animals. As a vegetarian I prefer not to eat any part of an animal.

But I hadn't realized the human animal is involved as well.

Mother Jones recently reported that some food additives and supplements are made from human hair.

Human hair has a high percentage of L-cysteine, an amino acid that gives hair its strength. This quality enhances baked goods as well, and many bakeries use dough conditioners containing L-cysteine in their products. (Mother Jones cites Tastykakes, Noah's bagels and Lunchables as products with L-cysteine added.)

L-cysteine is not only found in human hair. It can be extracted from poultry feathers (natural flavoring), or even manufactured in a lab (artificial flavoring). But human hair (natural flavoring) is the cheapest. A lot comes from a temple in India where pilgrims have their heads shaved.

Funnily enough, companies were reluctant to tell Mother Jones whether the L-cysteine in their products was synthetic or made from duck feathers or human hair. Vegans frown on feathers and hair, and Muslim religious authorities have deemed human hair derivatives haram - forbidden. Jewish authorities have determined that L-cysteine is kosher regardless of its source, kosher food expert Rabbi Zushe Blech told Mother Jones.

In the supplement world, L-cysteine is widely touted as an antioxidant. Alacer Corp. wouldn't say which form of L-cysteine is in Emergen-C, but Twinlab told Mother Jones writer Scott Carney that their supplements contain only human hair-derived L-cysteine.

Cajun food maker Zatarain's said it uses the synthetic product to create a "vegetarian chicken flavor" in its Blackened Chicken With Yellow Rice. Carney said he couldn't get an answer from General Mills, Goya Foods, or Orowheat about where their L-Cysteine comes from.

The words "natural flavorings" look so benign on an ingredient label. Who would have imagined what could be hiding behind them?

The world of mass-produced food just gets weirder and weirder.