Ciencia

 Food Ingredients & Packaging
* Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS)
* GRAS Substances (SCOGS) Database
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Select Committee on GRAS Substances (SCOGS) Opinion: Carrageenan
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The GRAS Substances (SCOGS) Database allows access to opinions and conclusions from 115 SCOGS reports published between 1972-1980 on the safety of over 370Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS) food substances. The GRAS ingredient reviews were conducted by the Select Committee in response to a 1969 White House directive by President Richard M. Nixon.
Carrageenan
* SCOGS-Report Number: 6*
* Type Of Conclusion: 3
* ID Code: 9000-07-1
* Year: 1973
* 21 CFR Section: 172.620
SCOGS Opinion:
The available information on the oraladministration of undegraded carrageenan at levels greatly exceeding the daily human intake, reveals evidence of possible adverse effects on the gastrointestinal epithelium. Extensive recent investigations of carrageenan and the pathogenesis of gastrointestinal changes indicates the susceptibility of the guinea pig to ulcerative colitis when fed relatively high levels of carrageenan in the diet. The worksuggests that the occurrance of ulcers in the large bowl of animals is a species-specific phenomenon where feeding of carrageenan can induce ulceration in the caecum and proximal colon of the guinea pig which to date, does nto appear to occur n the rat, mouse, hamster, pig, squirrel monkey, or man. Recent reports on the oral administration of undegraded sodium and calcium carrageenan of knownquality to pregnant animals reveals fetotoxic effects, with or without frank teratogenic effects, in some species at levels that do not greatly exceed the average daily human rate of intake. There effects appear to be dose-dependent. While carrageenan exhibites no mutagenic effects as measured by the hostmediated and dominant lethal assay procedures, significant abnormalities appear to be induced inthe anaphase figures of human embryoic lung cells in tissue culture at dosages that are slightly above average daily human intake. It is of further concern that parenterally administered carrageenan is reported to inhibit the activity of complement, excert cytotoxic effects on macrophases, suppress delayed hypersensitivity reactions in some tuberculin sensitive animals, activate factors causingprocoagulant activity in human blood platelets, increase vascular permeabiltiy, and liberate kinin in vitro, all of which point to the possibility of the generation of toxic effects that could cause adverse responses followint the oral consumption of carrageenan if, during pregnancy or in the presence of infectious challenge or metabolic disorder, appropriate amounts of carrageenan should be absorbedfrom the gastrointestinal tract. The Select committee has been informed that additional animal feeding and teratologic studis are soon to be initiated on commercial carrageenan and on several of the separated polysaccharide components of carrageenan. The Committee's opinion should be reviewed once the results of these studie become available. The Select Committee has weighed the foregoing andconcludes that: While no evidence in the available information on undegraded carrageenan demonstrates a hazard to the public when it is used at levels that are now current and in the manner now practiced, uncertainties exist requiring that additional studies should be conducted.

CHAPTER 3 - PRODUCTION, PROPERTIES AND USES OF CARRAGEENAN

by
Norman Stanley
FMC Corporation, Marine ColloidsDivision
5 Maple Street, Rockland
Maine 04841, USA
CARRAGEENANS
INTRODUCTION
Carrageenans are commercially important hydrophilic colloids (water-soluble gums) which occur as matrix material in numerous species of red seaweeds (Rhodophyta) wherein they serve a structural function analogous to that of cellulose in land plants. Chemically they are highly sulfated galactans. Due to their half-ester...