[GhostUser]

Hi, all. I've got a question that maybe the more ingrediant-savvy members might be able to answer. I often shop at a wonderful little family owned Oriental food store. They have some great soup mixes, and I often buy vegetarian udon and rice noodles with mushroom flavored broth. Good stuff! Anyway, on my last visit, I was reading the ingrediants of another brand of rice noodle soup mix, and I noticed one that said "Artificial Chicken flavoring". Sure enough, there was also one that said "Artificial Beef flavoring". Does anyone have any idea what it could be?

I asked one of the employees about it, and they didn't know what kind of ingrediant it was. The store owner knows I am a vegetarian, and he said that I could eat the mix since the flavoring was not made with real meat. I was a bit wary of that, though, and told him I might buy some on my next visit. Any ideas about what this "artificial" flavoring is?

 

[LadyFaile]

as far as i'm aware, any ingredient listed as "natural flavour" or "artificial flavour" could be anything, just that it's in such small amounts that the company isn't required to specify. your best bet is to contact the company and ask. see if they have a website with contact info or next time you're at that store write down the 1-800 customer service number off the package and give 'em a call

i had to do that once with vegetarian canned chilli, cause it listed "butter flavour" but didn't say if it was real or artificial. took a while for them to respond to the email, but they did eventually and cleared it up for me.

oh also i bought vegetable thins crackers once and saw nothing unvegan listed, but after eating half the box i looked at the nutrition info and it had a cholesterol count. meaning there's something unvegan in there cause only animal products have cholesterol. i was really mad. so check for a cholesterol listing, if it says 0 or isn't listed at all, it's probably fine.

 

[Michael]

If it's from an oriental store and you're not sure it's from animal sources then it probably is. I'm really careful when it comes to that stuff, I've been burned a couple of times eating things that I was told was vegetarian but wasn't.

 

[soilman]

I figure there are laws against putting hair, eyeballs, rectums, cecums, colons, spinal cords, hooves, skin, or penises, in pasta sauce, to flavor the sauce, and calling it meat sauce, or saying it has natural meat flavor, or that it is meat-flavored sauce. We don't want the consumer to be fooled into thinking that she is getting real meat, real skeletal muscle tissue, when she isn't. If you flavor your sauce with any of this stuff, I figure you can say that your sauce has artificial meat flavor, but you can't say it has meat flavor, or that it is flavored with meat. In order to say it is flavored with meat, probably the law requires that the sauce has to contain at least a certain percentage of skeletal muscle-tissue in it, instead of, or in addition to, any udders, uteruses, scrotums, ears, etcetera.

 

[mushroom]

I actually purchase vegetarian chicken broth...it clearly states NO ANIMAL INGREDIENTS...it is just spices that taste LIKE chicken. I don't have any right now, or I would tell you what they were. By the way, I really like it on tofu...and in soup.

 

[1vegan]

Quote:

Originally posted by LadyFaile

it had a cholesterol count. meaning there's something unvegan in there cause only animal products have cholesterol. i was really mad. so check for a cholesterol listing, if it says 0 or isn't listed at all, it's probably fine.

-\tWrong. 100% Vegan food can have cholesterol in it.

Quote:

Originally posted by soilman

I figure there are laws against putting hair, .to flavor the sauce.

In Europe there is a E-number (forgot the exact one) witch is used in regular bread/flour and can be made of pigs-hair.

(artificial) flavouring can be animal. Sometimes because of the ingredient-mix to get the flavour, sometimes because there is animal fat used as a carrier for the flavour.

 

[GhostUser]

As far as cholesterol is concerned...I think there's only 2 vegan things that contain it. One being palm kernel oil, and the other is a complete mystery to me...I can't remember it somehow.....maybe it's coconut oil? Hmmm.

 

[soilman]

"As far as cholesterol is concerned...I think there's only 2 vegan things that contain it. One being palm kernel oil, and the other is a complete mystery to me...I can't remember it somehow.....maybe it's coconut oil? Hmmm."

According to several reliable veg-non-veg-neutral sources of info about nutrition, there is no dietarily significant quantity of cholesterol in any plant matter. Highly saturated tropical oils like coconut oil, coco butter, chocolate liquor (containing cocoa butter, and palm kernal oil, tend to influence the human body to manufacture cholesterol, but they don't themselves contain any.

Researchers have found that certain plants under certain unusual conditions may perhaps manufacture miniscule amounts of cholesterol. But from what I can figure out, while this may be of some scientific interest, it has no practical significance in regard to food or diet.

 

[1vegan]

I'll search the house, and let you know what cholesterol containing products I found.

 

[LadyFaile]

i think people get mixed up between 'contains cholesterol' and 'raises cholesterol in the body' like the big avacado debate we had goin for a while.

 

[1vegan]

Quote:

Originally posted by 1vegan

-\tWrong. 100% Vegan food can have cholesterol in it.

Wrong myself. (oops)

The book "Becoming Vegan" page 55. Plants do not contain cholesterol.

Several charts in the book show that vegans have 0 cholesterol intake.

 

[melissaheartsu]

so is it ok for eating or not? this turned into a big cholesterol debate.

 

[GNUmoe]

Is this ethical or do you still need to know from what the "artificial flavoring" is made?