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The Secret Ingredient: Wood
![The 6 Most Horrifying Lies The Food Industry is Feeding You]()
You know what's awesome? Newspaper. Or, to be precise, the lack thereof. The Internet and other electric media have all but eaten up classic print media, with the circulations of almost all papers on the wane. Say, do you ever wonder what they do with all that surplus wood pulp?
"But Cracked," you inquire, "what does this have to do with food ingredients?"
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For the purposes of this article, you're kind of an idiot.
And we look at you squarely in the eye, then slowly bring our gaze upon the half-eaten bagel in your hand.
Oh, shit ...
The Horror:
What do they do with all the cellulose wood pulp? They hide it behind a bullshit name and make you eat it, that's what.
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The best part of waking up, is wood pulp in your face!
And everybody's doing it. Aunt Jemima's pancake syrup? Cellulose. Pillsbury Pastry Puffs? Cellulose. Kraft Bagel-Fuls? Fast-food cheese? Sara Lee's breakfast bowls? Cellulose, cellulose, goddamn cellulose.
Schuym1
Et tu, Hot Pockets?
It turns out that cellulose can provide texture to processed foods, so food companies have taken to happily using it as a replacement for such unnecessary and inconveniently expensive ingredients as flour and oil. As the 30 percent cheaper cellulose is edible and non-poisonous, the FDA has no interest for restricting its use -- or, for that matter, the maximum amount of it that food companies can use in a product. It is pretty much everywhere, and even organic foods are no salvation -- after all, cellulose used to be wood and can therefore be called organic, at least to an extent.
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