As the record of goods currently being recalled in Canada about fears of salmonella contamination continues to increase, so does the number of queries about the foods additive at the centre with the controversy.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has additional La Cocina cheese-flavoured tortilla chips and Grandma Emily’s BBQ Lounge Mix, to the dozens of items already becoming recalled over fears that an additive used to enhance flavour, hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP), may contain salmonella.
The agency also expanded a recall of Frontier whole black peppercorn packages. The HVP was manufactured by Basic Food Flavors Inc., based in Las Vegas. Nearly 100 merchandise have already been subject to recall in Canada, including potato chips, flavoured peanuts and spinach dip. More than 100 products have been recalled in the United States.
HVP is additional in dry powder and paste forms to a wide variety of packaged and processed foods, including soups, flavoured snacks and sauces. Manufacturers aren’t required to checklist HVP as an ingredient if it was additional to the meals product as part of another ingredient.
For the growing contingent of label-reading Canadians, the recall has created new concern about the sanctity of the country’s food supply. Foods additives, as well as preservatives and flavours, have come under increasing fire from critics who advocate for a return to basic, simple ingredients and unprocessed food.
“Just the term kind of puts people off a little bit,” said Art Hill,
Microsoft Office 2007 Product Key, professor and chair of meals science at the University of Guelph. “The perception is because they’re additional [to food] they’re something that’s cooked up in a mad scientist’s lab.”
Dr. Hill said figures such as Michael Pollan, author from the Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and advocate for consumption of whole, unprocessed foods, have turned the public off from the idea of foods processing,
Microsoft Office 2010, chemicals and added ingredients altogether.
There is good reason to be health-conscious and avoid preservatives such as monosodium glutamate, Dr. Hill said.
“Mistakes have been made,
Microsoft Office 2010, both in additives other meals processing interventions,” he said.
But processing, chemicals and additional ingredients are more common than many people realize, and are often necessary to make certain merchandise available. For instance, baking powder is a chemical leavening agent. Soybeans need to be processed in order for people to digest them properly and receive their nutrients.
And while it’s nice to imagine growing food in a backyard garden,
Office 2010 Professional Plus, the process of picking and preparing can cause some vegetables to lose their nutritional value, Dr. Hill said. The cold winter season also means many of those items simply aren’t available for large chunks from the year.
But innovations in food science have made it possible for producers to flash-freeze fruits and vegetables in a way that preserves their nutrients and makes them available at all times of year.
“To me, this whole area, it’s really about balance,” Dr. Hill said. “There’s a lot of processing that’s actually beneficial.”
While officials are still investigating the source of your problem, one food scientist said he believes it may have been caused by unsanitary conditions at the plant where HVP is manufactured.
Clair Hicks, a meals science professor in the University of Kentucky’s College of Agriculture and a regional communicator for the Institute of Meals Technologists, a non-profit scientific group,
Office 2007 Product Key, said the protein source and processing method don’t create risks of bacterial contamination and that it seems more likely that improper cleaning or sanitation methods are in the root with the problem.
Detailed information on the listing of recalled products can be found at
Microsoft Office 2007 Product Key Recalls raise ad
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