What is Tara Gum?

After studying up about carrageenan and learning that it possibly causes cancer, I began trying to avoid it as much as possible. This was a very difficult task when shopping for dairy products because most of them contain it. Thank goodness for companies like Daisy who produce carrageenan-free cottage cheese and sour cream!

I also thought I'd found a better ice cream brand in Breyer's All Natural ice cream, but after getting a carton of it home, I noticed an unfamiliar ingredient - tara gum! What is this and why did they add a weird ingredient to their "all-natural" ice cream? This warranted some research.

In researching tara gum, I found that it is, in fact, a "natural" product because it comes from a plant native to South America called Cesalpinia spinosa lin. Also known as the tara tree, it can grow as a bush or a tree and is now found in Morocco and East Africa too. The tara gum is obtained by milling the endosperm of the seeds through mechanical methods. This actually does sound a little more safe than carrageenan!

Tara gum has been approved as a thickener for use in many, many products. Some of them are dairy products such as cheese, cream, and ice cream, but it also may be added to other products such as pickles, baked goods, cereals, mustard, dried fruits and vegetables, soups, and many other things (a list of which can be found at this link: http://www.codexalimentarius.net/gsfaonline/additives/details.html?id=17.)

As an extra note, tara gum may not always be listed in the ingredients on product labels. It works more efficiently as a thickener, especially when combined with another thickening agent and if each of these agents comprises less than 2% of the product, they will not be listed. Tara gum may be used much more widely than than we realize.

As much as I dislike food additives, I do feel more comfortable with tara gum than with carrageenan. I read of 2 cancer studies done on tara gum and they both had negative results, meaning that tara gum does not seem to cause cancer in rats and mice. These studies are found at http://potency.berkeley.edu/chempages/TARA%20GUM.html and http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/?objectid=07063AE1-EF7A-1A17-22076056522B0DC2.

I do believe that tara gum is a safer thickener than carrageenan, therefore I feel that Breyer's All Natural ice cream is a slightly better choice than most other ice creams that are made with carrageenan. However, I also feel that ice cream is not a healthy choice of food in the first place and my intake of it should be very limited anyway.