Carrageenan

What is it?

Carrageenan is a soluble fibre derived from red seaweed and has been used for centuries to thicken and stabilise food. It’s found in a wide range of food products including frozen yogurt and reduced-fat ice cream.

Red seaweed, commonly known as Irish moss, was first described as a seaweed extract in Ireland as early as 1810, where it was recommended as a cure for respiratory ailments. Meanwhile, seaweed farming was starting in Japan in response to increased demand for the red seaweed. More than 100 years later, a small New England seaweed processing industry expanded enormously during World War II, mainly to replace agar, which had been supplied from Japan but was cut off by the war. Carrageenan got its start in commercial foods around this time when a Chicago dairy company called Krim-Ko began using it to keep the chocolate from settling in its bottled chocolate milk.

What does it do?

Carrageenan is an abundant, natural material which is very useful in thickening our toothpaste.

Carrageenan is also widely used as a food additive where it has been used to thicken, stabilise and modify the texture of a wide array of food products including – jams and jellies, dairy products like milks, cottage cheese, puddings, and ice cream, and even meat products like hot dogs and lunch meats.

How is it made?

Our Stewardship Model guides us to select ingredients which have been processed in a manner that supports our philosophy of human and environmental health.

The raw seaweed is cooked, rinsed, soaked and filtered. Then isopropyl alcohol is added and cooked with it, like a soup, the carrageenan separates out and can be dried to remove the alcohol then it is chopped and milled. 99.8% of the isopropyl alcohol is baked away in the drying process and the remaining isopropyl alcohol continues to evaporate after processing, leaving virtually none in the final product.

What are the alternatives?

Carrageenan often replaces synthetic thickeners, like Carbomer, and animal-based thickeners, like gelatin. There are other natural thickening ingredients as well, like acacia gum and xanthan gum, that might be used based on specific product attributes, but carrageenan represents a Stewardship friendly choice because it is a naturally and sustainably sourced material with little taste or odour and has a long history of safe use in food products.

Is this the right option for me?

The Joint Expert Committee of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and World Health Organization on Food Additives (JECFA) and the European Commission’s Scientific Committee on Food (SCF) oncluded that the use of Carrageenan as a food additive was of no safety concern.More recently, JECFA released a technical report on the use of carrageenan in infant formula and found that the additive was ‘not of concern’ in infant formula as food for special medical purposes at concentrations up to 1000 milligrams per litre.¹ Additionally, The US Food and Drug Administration has listed Carrageenan as a Food Additive Permitted for Direct Addition to Food for Human Consumption².