Tara flour: a quick review of the research
A review article finds it nontoxic.You may recall that on June 17, Daily Harvest issued a recall of its frozen vegan Crumbles product after 500 or so adverse event reports, many of severe liver damage among the 28,000 customers who ordered it.
Here’s what the front of the package looked like.
This product has lots of ingredients:
organic butternut squash, organic hemp seeds, organic cauliflower rice, organic extra virgin olive oil, organic french lentils, organic red lentils, organic tri-colored quinoa, organic cremini mushrooms, organic tara flour, organic leeks, organic parsley, water, organic cassava root flour, organic flax seeds, organic sacha inchi powder, chia seeds, organic porcini powder, himalayan sea salt, organic apple cider vinegar, organic onion powder, nutritional yeast, organic garlic powder, organic tomato powder, organic white pepper, organic coriander seeds, organic mustard powder, organic thyme.
As food safety lawyer Bill Marler predicted, tara flour has been identified as the ingredient at fault.
- Tara is only in Crumbles and Crumbles is the only product that made people sick.
- Tara is also in another company’s product, Revive smoothies, that made people sick.
I had never heard of tara and had to look it up. Since then, I’ve gotten curious and did some quick research.
Tara is a legume—a bean plant—grown in Peru and other Latin American countries.
Tara is grown for several purposes:
- Pod tannins for industrial leather, keeping ships free of marine animals, and preparing textiles to accept dyes
- Cosmetics (polysaccharides isolated from the seeds)
- Food additives—protein flours and gums (from the endosperm)
The research literature on tara is remarkably extensive (Who knew?).
On the tannins:
- Anything you want to know about tara tannins (from a doctoral dissertation)
- Use of tara tannins to prevent ship fouling
On cosmetics:
On tara as a food ingredient:
- An overview from the International Food Additive Council implies that it’s safe
- A major safety evaluation in 1993 says it’s safe.
- It’s not toxic as used in traditional Peruvian medicine
- Another review article finds it nontoxic.
- It is neither mutagenic nor genotoxic
- It may have anti-cancer properties
From everything previously reported about tara over the past 20 years, there is no reason to think it might be unsafe.
So what’s going on? How to explain “only” hundreds of cases of severe liver injury when 28,000 Crumbles meals were shipped during the time when cases were reported.
Possibilities:
- Some toxic ingredient accidentally or deliberately got into the tara flour (similar to melamine being substituted for wheat gluten in pet food in 2006 and in infant formula in China in 2008).
- Toxic tannins from other parts of the tara plant got into the endosperm flour.
- Some people have unusual sensitivities to tara proteins or digestive products of tara proteins (similar to what happens when people with coeliac disease eat gluten from wheat or other gluten-containing grains)
- Some people have inborn errors of metabolism that cause acute reactions to tara proteins (similar to what happens when people with deficiency of the enzyme glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase ingest fava beans)
- Others? Could be, but I can’t think of any.
To prevent this from happening again, it’s necessary to identify the toxin. I hope that happens soon.
Americans these days don’t want artificial and unsustainably produced ingredients in the food they buy and eat. For the makers of highly processed foods – ultraprocessed in today’s terminology – there isn’t a lot that they can do to make the products appear fresh and natural.
But Campbell’s is certainly trying. A few months after announcing that it will phase out genetically modified organisms (GMOs), the iconic soup company said on Friday that it will remove Bisphenol-A (BPA) from its cans by next year.
BPA, you will recall, is a chemical typically used in polycarbonate plastic containers and in the epoxy linings of food cans. It’s also an endocrine disrupter, which means it can interfere with the work our hormones are doing. Some research finds BPA to have effects on childhood development and reproduction.
Although the FDA doesn’t believe evidence of potential harm is sufficient to ban BPA from the food supply, the agency discourages use of BPA-polycarbonate or epoxy resins in baby bottles, sippy cups or packaging for infant formulas. For the past year or so, other retailers have been working hard to phase out BPA and to reassure customers that their cans and packages are safe.
All of these companies sell highly processed foods in an era when the public is demanding – and voting with their dollars – for fresh, natural, organic, locally grown and sustainably produced ingredients.
They can’t provide those things, but they can tout the bad, or unpopular, things that aren’t part of their product, the “no’s”: no unnatural additives, no artificial colors or flavors, no high fructose corn syrup, no trans fat, no gluten and, yes, no GMOs or BPA.
Let me add something about companies labeling their products GMO-free. In my view, the food biotechnology industry created this market – and greatly promoted the market for organics, which do not allow GMOs – by refusing to label which of its products contain GMOs and getting the FDA to go along with that decision. Whether or not GMOs are harmful, transparency in food marketing is hugely important to increasing segments of the public. People don’t trust the food industry to act in the public interest; transparency increases trust.
Vermont voted last year to mandate GMO labeling in the state – the US Senate rejected a bill in mid-March attempting to undermine it – and food conglomerates such as Campbell’s, General Mills, ConAgra, Kellogg and Mars have committed to labeling their products as containing GMO.
In addition to removing BPA from packaging and GMO from products, at least 11 other companies have announced recently that say they are phasing out as many artificial additives as possible, as quickly as they can.
Taco Bell, for example, will get rid of Yellow Dye #6, high fructose corn syrup, palm oil and artificial preservatives, and replace them with “natural” ingredients. Huge food companies such as Kraft, Nestlé (no relation) and General Mills are heading in the same direction.
All this may well benefit consumers to an extent. It also makes perfect sense from a business perspective: the “no’s” sell. But what everyone needs to remember is that foods labeled “free from” still have calories and may well contain excessive salt and sugars. The healthiest diets contain vegetables and lots of other relatively unprocessed foods. No amount of subtraction from highly processed foods is going to change that.