Monday, March 2, 2009

Coconut hiding in baked goods

Some of my fiercest allergic reactions have been to the whack-'em-on-the-counter variety of baked goods, namely Grands biscuits and Pillsbury crescent rolls. So I had to stop eating them entirely. I contacted the company and they said that they would only give the secretest ingredients to my allergist, blah, blah, so my allergist, rather than get involved in the weirdness with pillsbury, told me just to stop eating them.

Today I was shopping instead for frozen biscuits because I have had a certain off-brand before in Arizona that had totally pure ingredients (I don't remember which one), so I looked in our local Oklahoma store. I picked up a bag of
BEST CHOICE BUTTERMILK biscuits, and there, lo and behold, actually listed in the ingredients as a flavoring is COCONUT. So. . . the secret ingredient in many of these things that can legally just be listed as a "natural flavoring" is actually coconut. It must scientifically corellate to buttermilk as far as our taste buds are concerned.

Another thing to beware of is the ingredient: sodium steroyl lactylate in these items. This contains Stearic Acid, which is over 50% of the time derived from coconut in America. Argh.

Please be careful, coconut allergic people, and read all labels of baked goods now, too, in addition to everything else you are already looking out for.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I'm still figuring out my coconut (mostly oil) allergy as it becomes more and more sensitive. Here's a new one: I used to frequent a bakery that would carefully make me a brownie that would never come in contact with coconut. Then I had a reaction. I turns out that there is a very commonly used commercial-only baking spray that replaced trans-fats with coconut oil. So watch out for even simple sheet cakes from even the grocery store bakery. Even if you know all the baked-goods ingredients, the pan non-stick spray could literally kill you!

Becky said...

Yes, coconut has become an absolute favorite with bakeries lately. And, whippy toppings on cakes often have a coconut base.