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Saturday, January 21, 2006

Some food ingredients

I'm going to dedicate some of my blogs to create a distaste in readers, for all animal products, and food ingredients. Some of the below items, we consume or use in preparation of food without giving a second thought to where they come from. Well, now you will now.

Gelatin—Rhymes with "skeleton." Coincidence? I think not. Gelatin is a protein made by boiling cows’ and pigs’ skin, tendons, ligaments, and bones. Jell-O? Heck, no!

Honey—Sure, honey tastes sweet, but you’ll get a bad taste in your mouth when you learn how it’s "harvested."

From a former beekeeper: "[T]ypically, beekeepers are gloved and netted to avoid stings (nearly every bee who stings will die due to her entrails being pulled from her body attached to her stinger.) Then the hives are opened as quickly as possible and the bees are ‘smoked.’ Smoke from a smoldering fire carried in a ‘smoker’ is pumped into the hive and the bees are ‘calmed.’ In spite of this, the combs are pulled quickly and many bees are crushed in the process. When a bee is hurt, she releases a chemical message that alerts and activates the hive members who proceed to attack the intruder—giving their lives in the process."

Lard—Lard is such a gross word, it almost makes you wonder why they just don’t call it what it is: "Fat from hog abdomens."

Pepsin—If the thought of eating lard turns your stomach, stay away from pepsin, a clotting agent from pigs’ stomachs, used in some cheeses and vitamins.

Rennet—Certain
words just make you cringe, like coagulate, congeal, clot—which is what rennet, an enzyme taken from baby calves’ stomachs, is used for in cheese production.

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