but you'd be equally difficult pressed to find foods makers willing to acknowledge that they use the hair-derived edition. vegans never consider kindly to it, nor do muslim spiritual authorities, that have deemed human hair derivatives haram—forbidden. (jewish authorities have approved l-cysteine for use in kosher products, regardless of source.) foods manufacturers may also be sensitive to the ick factor (is it cannibalism?). of the numerous companies i contacted, only supplement maker twinlab—which markets l-cys for its powerful antioxidant properties—verified that it came from human hair.
indeed, although the stuff is everywhere, trying to pinpoint the source of l-cys in any specific consumer product can be a nearly kafkaesque exercise. while cajun food maker zatarain's said it uses the synthetic product to create a "vegetarian chicken flavor" in its blackened chicken with yellow rice, i couldn't get any sort of answer out of general mills, goya foods, baker orowheat, or alacer corp.,
Office 2007 Standard Key, which uses cysteine in its popular emergen-c products.
a rep for the tasty baking company says the cysteine in tastykake products is derived from "sugar or syrup." rather than answer my question, kraft simply noted that the cysteine in its oscar mayer-brand lunchables prepackaged lunches is fda approved (all types are), and that it comes from "leading suppliers." cereal maker kellogg's told me it no longer uses l-cys in pop-tarts,
Buy Windows 7, and that its formula specifics are proprietary in any case. safeway proved more forthright: "it's duck feathers," the grocery chain's rep for in-house bakery goods said in an email.
rabbi zushe blech, a leading kosher foods expert, counseled me to take all of it with a grain of cysteine hydrochloride. "no one makes the distinction—no one cares," he said. blech should know. his book, kosher food production, devotes an entire chapter to l-cys,
Discount Office 2007, and because jewish dietary law is so exacting, certifying agencies such as the orthodox union (with whom blech is affiliated) likely know more about what's in your foods than the meals and drug administration does. to wit: an fda spokesman could locate me just one internal reference to cysteine's hairy origins in the agency's archives—from a 1982 memo.
while most suppliers differentiate between animal and nonanimal sources, the rabbi told me, few distinguish between duck and human. processors favor human hair "because it's twice as potent,
Microsoft Office 2007 Enterprise," he explained. blech added that many industrial meals makers buy their cysteine prepackaged with yeast and other additives as bulk "dough conditioners," without regard to the origin of the components. one researcher at watson inc., a company that specializes in dough conditioners, told me he insists on duck-feather cysteine,
Office 2010 Home And Business Key, but added that he knows plenty of companies that will not. there's no real difference in the product, he conceded. "we just thought duck feathers were better."