Getting to the root of a creepy food additive: human hair

"The Human Hair Additive in Your Food."

It appears in Mother Jones.

"For his recent Mother Jones story on the origins of the 'remy' hair used in high-end wigs and extensions worthy of Lady Gaga, Scott Carney sacrificed his own locks to a Hindu temple, but explained that clippings from short hair like his are used mainly as fertilizer or source material for a ubiquitous food additive called L-cysteine (L-cys for short)," the magazine reports. "This amino acid, which gives hair its strength, also gives Noah's bagels their bounce, puts the softness in Tastykakes, and imparts mom-made freshness to Lunchables. It's a meat flavor enhancer and an expectorant, too—and has even turned up on a list of cigarette additives."

Guess I won' t feel so bad the next time one of my stray hairs lands in the family dinner.

But seriously, can we get any closer to Soylent Green? "Tastykakes are made out of people!  ... You gotta tell 'em -- Tastykakes are people!"

Or are they?

It's hard to tell which food manufacturers are serving up hair and which aren't, the article suggests. It also indicates that food makers might not know, or want to know, themselves.

The article notes that L-cys can also be derived from duck feathers or created synthetically in the lab and that most food manufacturers do not admit to using L-cys from hair.

Tastykakes told Mother Jones its L-cys comes from "sugar or syrup." Safeway said it uses the duck-feather variety. But the article also quoted a kosher-certification expert who said processors, whether they admit it or not, prefer L-cys made from hair because it is "twice as potent."

"[M]any industrial food makers buy their cysteine prepackaged with yeast and other additives as bulk 'dough conditioners,' without regard to the origin of the components," the rabbi told Mother Jones.

The rabbi, incidentally, did not seem troubled by the human-hair additive. But his last name said it all: Blech.

Sun photo by Algerina Perna.