CLUB SANDWICH 67

AND IN THE GREEN CORNER

The Who famously sang "we won't get fooled again" but we are still being fooled, and most of the time. Ever a contentious issue (just how much do you think manufacturers want you to know?) the dodgy problem of food labelling once more raises its ugly head, prompting Mark Lewisohn to ask a few pertinent questions

            Are you a vegetarian? Yes? Good. Great,, in fact.
            But do you eat ice cream or use low-fat spreads or low-fat mayonnaise or suck mints or chew gum or take vitamin capsules? You do? Then, sorry, but you're probably not a vegetarian after all.
            These products, and a good many others, contain gelatin (or gelatine). It's a harmless enough name all right, and it's been around for so long that very few among us question what exactly it is. Well here's a dictionary definition for you: "a colourless, odourless, tasteless glue prepared from albuminous substances, eg bones and hides".
            Bones and hides. Bones and hides... of animals. In other words, all the bits and pieces and entrails left behind after flesh has been scraped and steamed away, processed into a yellowish jelly. It's a vile, slaughterhouse bi-product, and usage of it is rampant in the food industry. (And others industries besides.)
            Now, I don't think that I've been particularly dense about this (although it's certainly a possibility) but I just didn't know. There I've been all these years, considering myself a vegetarian, and proud of it, when actually - courtesy of low-fat yoghurts - I've been intaking animal derivatives on a daily basis, and also feeding them to my children. While blissfully believing that I've been carefully cutting down on their fat intake I've been blithely feeding them crushed animal hooves and boiled-up bones.
            The fact is, many vegetarians believe that the products they eat are animal-free when they are nothing of the kind. Carnivores may smile at the news - "at last they've got their come-uppance for all that preaching" one can almost hear them baying - but doubtless they too are being affected by food manufacturers' deceptions somewhere along the line.
            Staff at The Vegetarian Society have long been aware of the gelatin problem.
            Sue Stobart, whose job it is to licence the Society's distinctive "V" symbol for labelling on pure vegetarian products, is appalled by the widespread use of gelatin. "Who would ever think, when choosing and eating a yoghurt, that it's got the remains of a dead animal in it," she questions. "And it's also in lots of ready-made desserts and puddings, an awful lot of sweets, even things like Polo mints, and it's a fairly safe bet that pastilles and jelly babies are full of gelatin too."
            Worse still is the fact that although gelatin may have been used in the processing of a product it may not be declared in the stated ingredients because, by the time the product is sold, it is no longer present. For example, its molecular structure is such that gelatin is used by some manufacturers of apple juice as a fining agent – that is, to make the naturally cloudy liquid into the clear liquid that consumers seem to want. But because there's no trace of the gelatin by the time the juice is put on sale the carton -will list "apple juice" as the only ingredient. It's also used in some wines for the same reason and, again, you'd never know it from looking at a label.
            And to continue the theme, soft drinks which include beta-carotene, an orange colouring, may also contain gelatin, in that it can be used to encapsulate the substance or help to make it soluble. But although you'll see beta-carotene listed among the ingredients you have no way of knowing whether or not gelatin was once knocking about in there too.

Despite the subterfuge, however, close scrutiny of food labelling should certainly still be practised. Kim Davenport of Eat Your Hearts Out! - caterers on the McCartneys' World and New World Tours -was recently given a vivid reminder of this. "I bought some vegetable oil in Australia," she says, "didn't read the label because I assumed it was simply that, vegetable oil, and only found out later that it was cut with animal fat. Also in Australia, all the cream is thickened with gelatin. Linda once told me never to go to the supermarket without a magnifying glass, and she's absolutely right. Whoever would have thought that vegetable oil would be cut with animal fat, and cream with gelatin? And I know that animal products are in most sweets and biscuits too."
            So just why is the use of gelatin still so widespread in these supposedly enlightened times, these days of supposedly greater consumer awareness and increasing vegetarianism? Sue Stobart of The Vegetarian Society believes it's because pressure has never really been put on companies to seek an alternative. "They could use guar gum, pectin or agar-agar (so good they named it twice!) but rarely bother because they're not as stable or reliable in mass production. Then again," she adds, "they've not really sought ways to improve them either."
            A spokesperson for a leading sweet-making company told me, "They [the alternative substances to gelatin] just don't have the right texture and consistency to go through the machines used to make our confectionery. And besides, they don't give the same chewy texture that the public expects from our product."
            Pardon me for being cynical, but haven't we heard this argument before? "The public won't want it so we won't give it to them"? Sorry, but it just doesn't wash. The consumer -once things are explained properly -really doesn't want his haddock artificially yellowed, his apricots artificially oranged, his bread artificially whitened, or darkened, his fruit waxed to look shiny...or his yoghurt to contain crushed and boiled animal remains.
            I thought we'd been through all this for the last time, but obviously not. So ought we not to use our voices once again to tell manufacturers just what we do want. And not stop telling them until they listen?
            
            GELATIN MAY BE FOUND IN...
            Low-fat spread
            Yoghurt (especially low-fat, long-life or whipped)
            Mousse and other dairy desserts
            Jelly
            Mints
            Vitamin capsules
            Low-fat mayonnaise
            Marshmallows
            Jelly babies
            Wine gums
            Sugar-coated sweets
            Chewing gum
            Ice cream and sorbet
            "Fitness" drinks
            AND MAY HAVE BEEN USED IN THE PROCESSING OF...
            Wine
            Port
            Apple juice