Thursday, May 14, 2009

Paying Attention to Detail

I was nosing around earlier this morning and came across a marketing website with a blurb on Quorn, and how its makers have apparently redesigned its packaging to appeal to more "mainstream" consumers while "retaining its core vegetarian and vegan customers".

I don't know which vegan customers the company is supposedly retaining, since Quorn's not vegan. According to the company's website, all of its products contain eggs, and most of its products contain milk ingredients.

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This next ramble's much more significant in terms of the need to pay attention to detail. A poster on the wonderful Vegan Freak Forums gave everyone a heads up today about the need to be careful when purchasing Red Star Nutritional Yeast from bulk bins. This person noticed a taste difference after buying some, which prompted her to check the fine print on the bulk bin's label and to discover that it was listed as an "NBC600" formula (now called LYNSIDE® FORTE Bmore). The Red Star Nutritional Yeast ordinarily used by vegans for its B12 content is the Vegetarian Support Formula™ (which used to be called T6635+).

When she contacted the company for clarification, she was told that the NBC600 / LYNSIDE® FORTE Bmore formula is only fortified with B1, B2, B3 and B6. So if you're relying on Red Star Nutritional Yeast as a B12 supplement and buying it from a store that keeps it in bulk, make sure that it's the correct formula. For more information on the vitamin content of the nutritional yeasts the company sells, visit this page on its website.

2 comments:

Anna Graham Shonle said...

John Robbins has a Q&A installment about Quorn which makes it sound like Quorn has other problems in addition to not being a vegan product. http://www.foodrevolution.org/askjohn/35.htm

M said...

Thanks for providing that link, Anna. I remember reading some information along these lines in discussion forums a few years back.

It certainly does sound as if there are serious safety concerns that should be weighed by the non-vegans who do consume it.