Hacker News Reader

HNHacker News

Top New Best Ask Show Jobs

Comment by wahnfrieden | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

wahnfrieden·

it's wood pulp. sawdust derivative. aka cellulose.

don't buy pre-shredded cheese unless you like replacing up to 10% of your cheese with essentially sawdust at a premium.

https://www.eater.com/2016/3/3/11153876/cheese-wood-pulp-cel...

View on HN

Cellulose is not "wood pulp" or "sawdust." Only about 50% of sawdust is cellulose. The rest is hemicellulose, lignin, resins, and oils. Any plant material that you eat contains cellulose. It's just about the most benign thing you could add to food as an anti-caking agent. ...not matter what the eater.com article with the attention grabbing headline that you linked to might say.

I didn't say it's unsafe. The issue is replacing expensive product with filler

Cellulose is literally not sawdust. It could be made from sawdust, but would be heavily processed and refined, removing lignin/etc.

A) Sometimes it's cellulose - corn starch and other anti-caking agents are also used

B) it's legally limited to 4%, not 10%

That's fine to say it is so on paper however the legal limit is not respected with several common household brands testing at 8-9% in last results I can find. They're incentivized to pad the product with anti caking agents to reduce cost, and it is essentially unenforced. Expect this to worsen as FDA is undergoing planned dismantlement.

Please provide a link to back this up. The Eater.com article you linked to elsewhere is from 2016 and refers to a specific enforcement action where a company plead guilty to food adulteration for adding excessive cellulose to parmesan cheese. Not a great example of something being "essentially unenforced."

Can you link to some of this testing?

Nope, the shredded cheese I buy uses potato starch. And it's definitely a trace amount, not 10%.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com