10 Brands That Put 'Wood' in Their Food

[Liberal_in_LA]

10 Brands That Put 'Wood' in Their Food

General Mills

General Mills (Stock Quote: GIS) uses cellulose in the following products:


Fiber One Ready-To-Eat Muffins (Wild Blueberry & Oats; Mixed Fruit, Nuts & Honey; Apple Cinnamon Bun, Banana Chocolate Chip)


Fiber One Original cereal


Fiber One Chewy Bars (90 Calorie Chocolate, 90 Calorie Chocolate Peanut Butter)


Fiber One baking products (Apple Cinnamon Muffin Mix, Banana Nut Muffin Mix, Blueberry Muffin Mix)


Pillsbury Moist Supreme Classic Yellow Cake Mix


Pillsbury Mozzarella and Pepperoni Pastry Puffs


Pillsbury Cheese and Spinach Crescent Pastry Puffs


Pillsbury Artichoke and Spinach Bread Bowl Bites


Pillsbury Buffalo Chicken Crescent Pastry Puffs


Pillsbury Cream Cheese and Jalapeno Bread Bowl Bites


Betty Crocker whipped frostings (Strawberry Mist, Chocolate, Cream Cheese)


Betty Crocker Vanilla Amazing Glazes


Duncan Hines Cake Mixes (Devil's Food Cake Mix, Dark Chocolate Fudge, Strawberry Supreme, Fudge Marble, Classic Yellow, French Vanilla

More companies here: http://www.mainstreet.com/slideshow/lifestyle/food-drink/10-brands-put-wood-their-food?cm_ven=msnetzero

[arbusto_baboso]

1. Not a surprise to me. I took a tour of a lumber mill in Ketchikan, AK some years back...

And I remember seeing a large tank that said "Food Grade Wood Pulp" on the side of it. When I asked the tour guide about that, she said, "Oh, yeah, that goes into a lot of products. When you see 'cellulose' listed as an ingredient, it's our product."

Nice, eh?

[Newest Reality]

2. I'll bet that

beavers everywhere are ecstatically delighted and drooling, now.

[Whapiti]

24. HEY you woodchucks....quit chuckin MY WOOD !!!!!

those beavers can have my banana nut muffin mix, when they pry it from my cold dead fingers........

[KansDem]

3. Corporate Sales Volume: $14,796,500,000

That's a lot of wood!

[ZombieHorde]

4. Unrec for hypobolic nonsense. Cellulose is what the walls of plant cells are made of.

Hemp contains cellulose, and we love hemp; right?

[blondeatlast]

6. Thank you; I was about to break out my 14 yo son's science text. nt

[msongs]

10. sawdust is added as a filler because it is cheap - it is NOT a necessary ingredient nt

[ZombieHorde]

14. Sawdust contains cellulose, but cellulose is not sawdust. It is just a plant cell wall.

People have been eating cellulose for thousands of years. Standing outside in the sunlight is more dangerous than eating cellulose.

[arbusto_baboso]

22. But the stuff *called* cellulose in many products IS wood pulp.

Not that I think it's particularly harmful, mind you, but I think it's something that consumers should know.

[ZombieHorde]

32. I have been googling this, but I can't seem to find food products which contain acutual wood pulp,

as opposed to foods containing products made from wood pulp, such as cellulose. I looked up bamboo, but I guess that is actually a grass.

[riderinthestorm]

33. Do you have a link for that?

I'm honestly interested. Shavings and sawdust are so valuable and we pay so much for them, I'd really like to see your information. I just find it hard to believe it's being put into food as a cheap byproduct when it's got so much more value on its own.

[csziggy]

36. Shavings and sawdust used to be waste products

That the sawmills had to pay someone to carry off. Back in those days we'd haul our horse trailer to the mill down the road and fill it with shavings for free. We could take as much as we wanted, no limits, though we had to check to make sure someone else had not emptied their stockpile.

Then a local dump truck owner made a deal that he would haul off all their shavings for nothing - he charged the stable owners an amount over his cost of hauling so he made a nice profit and we were all happy we did not have to do the work ourselves.

Then suddenly the shavings and sawdust became "product" rather than waste. Now it is impossible to get a truckload of shavings or sawdust unless you can make a deal with a furniture maker. The sawmill up the road sells their shavings to Georgia Pacific to be made into particle board. For a while they were burning their sawdust to heat their lumber drying kilns but now they make more money selling it than it costs them to use natural gas to power the kilns.

[riderinthestorm]

37. I know but this crazy rumour persists that they are used in food!

A $.79 box of Kraft Mac and Cheese is waaaayyyy too cheap to have any wood products in it. They are damn expensive. I had my sister in law, her daughter and a friend of theirs swing through the Chicago area over Thanksgiving and they stayed with me for a few days. They're all vegans which is fine since we all worked together prepping food so everyone was happy. But every single day they'd pull out a container of parmesan cheese or cereal or some other food product I have in my house and tell me how it contained sawdust!

There was no convincing them! They could physically SEE the enormous semi trailer parked next to the barn filled with shavings/sawdust mix we use for the stalls, they saw the invoice for them (that particular truckload was just under $2k) so they had the proof in front of them of how expensive they are but it was like some kind of disconnect.

Like I posted before, I crossed this rubicon years ago with a neighbor friend who actually worked in the test kitchens of Duncan Hines and she told me it was food waste products that they put in as "cellulose". Beyond that, I've never been able to get anyone to give me actual evidence that the cellulose in food is sawdust. I'd really like to see that evidence actually.

Did it used to be sawdust before it became such a valuable commodity? Perhaps. Do these urban legends have some validity? I have no doubt.

But now? My personal experience says there's no way there's sawdust in food.

[csziggy]

38. Oh, I see what you mean and I agree

It would be cheaper and simpler to use cellulose waste from food products rather than process wood cellulose for use in food. Companies would already have waste from processing wheat, rice, corn and oats on hand - why would they want to bring in wood cellulose and do the additional processing for it?

We can't even get shaving by the truckload anymore - the people running our barn now are buying it in bags. My guys seldom stay in so we don't even use bedding in their stalls, just sand except for the mares with foals at side and they get straw. But straw is hard to get and expensive, so we hate to use that.

[emilyg]

26. Thank you.

[Angry Dragon]

30. And the body can not digest cellulose

[tammywammy]

35. Because it's a dietary fiber. n/t

[msanthrope]

39. Jeebus, don't bring basic facts and science into this......n/t

[Gormy Cuss]

42. The real question is, what is the source of the cellulose in food products?

Microcrystalline cellulose is used in food products and that's from wood pulp.

[XemaSab]

43. Thank you!

Science education in this country really sucks.

[louis-t]

5. Also check to see if the "fruit" is really

"fruit". Amazing how many products have fake blueberries.

[originalpckelly]

7. I could get wood from making a cake?

I will have to try that!

:P

Fuck Viagra, it's Duncan Hines for me!

[Joanie Baloney]

8. Well, of course!

Euell Gibbons knew that trees were good for you. After all, "many parts are edible!"

:)

-JB

[mike_c]

9. do you view this as a problem?

We eat cellulose every time we eat fruits and vegetables. It's one of the most abundant and common biological molecules on Earth.

[Liberal_in_LA]

41. Cellulose naturally occuring in edible plant, ok. Cellulose added from wood products, not ok

[marybourg]

11. "Fiber" = cellulose. Another missive from the indignation brigade. nt.

[Drale]

12. Its a good source of fiber

:rofl: I would venture to guess that wood is like dirt, its not dangerous in small amounts. Although I have nothing to back up that claim so I could be wrong.

[realisticphish]

13. I bet they use dihydrogen monoxide, too nt

[Tesha]

17. The're phasing that stuff out in favor of hydrogen hydroxide! (NT)

[blondeatlast]

21. Eeeewwww... That's that liquidy stuff, isn't it? nt

[joeybee12]

15. If it's good for you, companies would advertise "Got Wood?" on their products...

:blush:

[Shagbark Hickory]

18. Isn't that viagra's slogan?

[Tesha]

16. The cell walls of all plant cells contain cellulose; that's one of the defining characteristics...

...of plants versus animals.

Tesha

[HuckleB]

19. GO-AW-ONNGG!!!

:eyes:

Thanks for pointing out that ridiculous web site. But, mostly, thanks for wasting our time.

:mad:

[cleanhippie]

20. Well, technically it IS fiber!

Plant fiber.

[cali]

23. that's probably the least objectionable ingredient in those products

there's an easy solution here: don't buy prepared faux food.

[Liberal_in_LA]

40. good point

[A Simple Game]

25. I can't remember the name but there was a brand of bread

that bragged about having wood cellulose in it for fiber.

It may have been twenty or thirty years ago, time means very little to me.

It wasn't too bad, but not great.

[fascisthunter]

27. let the market decide.... um... duhhhhhh

after someone gets poisoned or dies.

[riderinthestorm]

28. Do you know if its actual wood, or the byproduct of other processes like applesauce?

The reason I ask is that sawdust is an extremely valuable commodity. It's much more valuable in other commercial and industrial uses than in food (personal experience, we use a sawdust/shavings mix in the stalls at our farm. A semi-trailer load of shavings goes for almost $2000. That's a damn expensive product to be used as a food filler in a .99 box of cake mix, in fact, I believe it's not actual wood in those mixes.

My neighbor used to be a test chef for Duncan Hines and she told me that the cellulose was usually pulp and other "waste" by-products from other food products like applesauce. The cellulose comes from fruit, vegetables and anything else they already have within the company's other production lines.

[eShirl]

29. Pillsbury: We Got Your Wood Right Here

HOO-HOO!

[InvisibleTouch]

31. I always thought those "health food" cereals tasted like sticks and cardboard. Blech. n/t

[backscatter712]

34. No wonder those Fiber One bars taste like cardboard - they're partially made of cardboard! n/t

[Art_from_Ark]

44. Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZQAdCDcU0A