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Ingredient Quality: Is it food grade?


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I am from India and I find it difficult to source quality ingredients and was pleasantly surprised to find that most of the ingredients such as xanthan gum, sodium alginate, high quality gelatin (with Bloom number specified) available with Sigma Aldrich who supply chemicals tour molecular biology lab.

The manufacturer however warns that it is only for research and laboratory use.

Since molecular biology and cell culture labs require ingredients of high quality (higher than for culinary purposes), are these safe to be used in food preparation?

What is the difference between food grade and laboratory grade?

Able

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My belief is that such products are indeed of much higher purity than mere 'food grade' products.

Moreover, any impurity (or potential impurity) content ought to be discoverable from the suppliers - who would likely be quite forthcoming about such things.

If you were to ask, I'd expect you could get datasheets on each product.

Laboratory products tend to be more expensive than kitchen products - but that does not rule out any exceptions.

Of course pharmaceutical grade would be even better ... !

Because food additives ("molecular biology ingredients") are used in tiny % with food, and this food is going to be a small % of one's total diet, any tiny % impurity in the additive would need to be of something extremely powerful to represent a health risk.

Anything having that potency in vivo would surely be significant in vitro, and be flagged up on the datasheet.

My suspicion would be that the manufacturers would be encouraged by their legal departments to display "not a food" warnings in order to avoid any potential involvement from product liability insurance, food inspectors, labelling requirements, and even building requirements.

I'm sure they'd pass all the tests, but by insisting that they aren't making 'food', they would be bypassing a vast amount of cost and bureaucracy.

Notwithstanding all the above, I'm sure that it would be inviting the possibility of all manner of legal difficulties to use something explicitly marked as "not for food use" in the context of commercial food.

"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch ... you must first invent the universe." - Carl Sagan

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It might also be that some substances produced specifically for laboratory use might contain preservatives, stabilizers, and other materials that are not approved for human consumption/require preservation in equipment that is not readily available outside of laboratories (e.g. refrigeration at temperatures no achievable by consumer or food industry equipment).

Michaela, aka "Mjx"
Manager, eG Forums
mscioscia@egstaff.org

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I would avoid using mol bio grade reagents in food. While the purity may be impressively high, the identity of the contaminants may be problematic. For example, mol bio grade ethanol may be 95 percent pure but may contain things like benzene or dioxin as trace contaminants at non-foodsafe levels. If you want to get kitchen supplies from Sigma (which I think is a fine idea), go for USP grade which is approved for human consumption and use in pharmaceutical products (USP stands for United States Pharmacopeia). USP ethanol (95 percent) might contain water as a "contaminant".

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