Project

Text: There is Food in my Wood 1

Project Text: There is Food in my Wood

University of Texas at El Paso
Isaac Reyes

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Abstract
In many ways we think of food as something that cant be faked replicated or in other words
made in the lab of some chemist laboratory. But now most Americans and educated know that
this isnt true and that most food is genetically altered, and so much so that there is a while
market for food that is free from any genetically alterations. But now with what Ive discovered
that not all food is food and that now and for a while now theyve started adding cellulose a
common part in newspaper, wood pulp, and cardboard to substitute to oils, flour, and sugars.
This is an unsettling fact to look upon as for two reasons its wood we are eating and its not
digestible

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Food and what it is has become an important issue in our nation so much that we have to check a
few things before we eat it like how many calories, how much sodium, whether it has gluten, if
its dairy free, sugar free, if it has preservatives, or if its just kosher, however we really dont
question what exactly whats in the catalyst of ingredients on the back of boxes of food that we
eat and if its bad and why its bad but rather we label food by detail as bad or good on a detail
like gluten, and thats why its fishy to me why we dont question why its okay that they are
putting what is essentially paper in our food and nothing is being done about it.
Cellulose has been around in food for a long time and as some stating in their articles as early as
1919 as in this article by Jesse Rhodes (2011)Frederick Hoelzel. An adventurous eater, he found
that chopped surgical cotton doused with fruit juice could satisfy his appetite for a few days and
in 1919, he developed cellulose-based flour. (Jesse, Rhodes , 2011,The wood in Your Food,
para. 3). And the idea being tweaked with chemistry in 1955 in the same article written by Jesse
Rhodes
It wasnt until 1955 that chemist Dr. O.A. Battista accidentally discovered edible
cellulose by leaving a solution of cellulose and water in the blender a little too
long. Expecting a gritty, sandy substance to end up at the bottom of the blender,
he got a noncaloric custard. He used the flavorless gel to make a batch of
cookies and, under the name Avicel, the product was quickly marketed to the food
industry.
(Jesse Rhodes, 2011, The Wood in Your Food, para. 3).
And this history comes to modern era as there are patents being written on food and cellulosed
based idea and products as early as 1979 and being filed as early as 1982 in this patent by Albin
F. Turbak, Fred W.Snyder, Karen R. Sandberg (1982) simply states Among the many uses of

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microfibrillated cellulose are as a thickener, flavor carrier and suspension stabilizer for a wide
variety of food products. (U.S. Patent No. 4,341,807. 1982). this quick over view makes it
apparent that cellulose has been around for a very long time and is something should have more
light shown upon it.
When we grow up and we see food as what is on the surface, food however as we get older we
look at nutritional facts on the back along with the ingredients for what the food contains, but
now that Ive done this project its hard to look at food thats been in any sort of factory without
wondering and worrying what exactly the ingredients in your food are and what the ingredient
are for the ingredients in you food are and where they come from. And the subject of food and its
creation becomes more complicated if you add the idea of genetically modified organisms and
preservatives, but the things we put in food used to be you know food not wood or as its more
commonly referred to as on the back of box as cellulose in your food.
Many people have no idea what cellulose is as the name really doesnt speak to the common
folk but thats because that is the scientific term for something that is rather common. Celluloses
its technical term throws a person off making them think that it is something completely else like
saying salts technical term; sodium chloride and expecting people to know what it is almost like
trickery. This trickery is the companies basically lying to the consumer behind a technical term
and this action is expected, as you would never buy something like eggs if they called them by a
more truthful term to their actual nature but more disturbingly true name like chicken periods.
But asides from the false representation of info on the ingredient the best explanation for what
exactly is cellulose is by Jesse Rhodes (2011) On the molecular level, its a string of sugar
molecules. Its the stuff that makes up the cell walls of plant matter. Cotton is an excellent source
of cellulose in its purest form. Cellulose is a major component of wood, giving that material its

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signature strength.(Jesse Rhodes, 2011,The wood in Your Food, para. 2). Basically cellulose is
the fibers in your paper, wood, and cardboard.
So now you are wondering how do they get the cellulose or paper in the food without thinking
you ate the food with the wrapper on it. Well like many artificial flavorings and food substitutes
the foods are analyzed and assessed for what is to be switch out with something else and how is
another question. Basically what you need to know is they use science to trick your own anatomy
by changing the chemistry of the food with whatever substitute and make it taste like something
else. In this article by Pauli Poisou (2011) on what orange juice manufactures do to the juice
once they store it for a year without oxygen and the juice is flavorless

There is just one downside to the process (from the manufacturers' point of
view, that is) -- it removes all the taste from the liquid. So, now they're
stuck with vats of extremely vintage watery fruit muck that tastes of paper
and little else. What's a poor giant beverage company to do? Why, they reflavor that shit with a carefully constructed mix of chemicals called a flavor
pack, which are manufactured by the same fragrance companies that
formulate CK One and other perfumes. Then they bottle the orange scented
paper water and sell it to you.
(Pauli Poisou, 2011,The 6 Most Horrifying Lies The Food Industry is Feeding You, para, 13)
This process for chemistry changing essentially mimics everything except for what it actually Is,
so basically this changing is like fools gold for the modern day person. Although this food
composition is not uncommon as almost every process food made has somewhat of a
composition change and yet can be called something else completely than what it is. This is so

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prevalent but yet so understood as most companies and food processors hide behind a technical
name or scientific name than using common term for the actual ingredients. But this action is
expected as almost every industry in society follows this practice and gets away with lying to
you about what really goes into your products from your food to your beauty products as
technically its a correct term for the substance. But how do they get away with putting something
like cellulose into your body?
Cellulose is simply the raw construct of what holds and give the plant in the world their
structure, and essentially the same stuff the cell wall of a plant cell is made of. This substance or
better known as tree bark, or sawdust Is not harmful to your body in a sense as it is something
that you cant even digest properly. The substance cellulose actually cant really be processed by
really any animal in the animal kingdom but is let go thru FDA regulations as an resourceful
fiber substitute and additive in food to let into your food. This article by Allison Aubrey ( 2014)
because cellulose acts much like fiber in your body as that what fiber in food really is a safe to
eat passable object in your food and the FDA was totally fine with this as supports this The
FDA long ago green-lighted the use of added cellulose in foodstuffs. And, in our bodies this
cellulose passes right through our GI tracts, virtually unabsorbed. (Allison Aubrey, 2014, From
McDonalds To Organic valley, Youre Probably Eating Wood pulp, para, 5) . Overall this food
additive is not really bad but not really good as it adds nothing to your food and its not really bad
as it cant harm you for the most part, but what should bother you is in many ways the food
industry uses it the same way that the chip companies use the most air bag package of chips. The
cellulose additives in food should make you one think about those relatively new high in fiber
foods that seem to be low in calories and fat; as it may be part wood or paper. So cellulose is

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really there to stretch as much product with out using a hundred percent real edible and digestible
food.
So the only question you might have left is in what foods do they hide the cellulose or better
known as paper, or wood? Well it was really hard to find a good source for what exact products
as there are numerous permutations of cellulose, and like the permutation sugars in our food they
are all essentially sugar but named differently but rhyme with gross. But in the research that was
found cellulose was very commonly in starch like foods like breads and pastries as an additive,
like in this article by Pauli Poisou(2011) Cellulose, cellulose, goddamn cellulose. It turns out
that cellulose can provide texture to processed foods, so food companies have taken to happily
using it as a replacement for such unnecessary and inconveniently expensive ingredients as flour
and oil. (Pauli Poisou, 2011, The 6 Most Horrifying Lies The Food Industry is Feeding You,
para 8 ). Cellulose is also used in many dairy products as a flavoring for many dairy based
products as a way to make the product creamier and richer as in this article by Jesse
Rhodes(2011) Cellulose is also used to make ice cream and cheeses smoother in consistency,
and to keep strands of shredded cheese from sticking together.(Jesse Rhodes, 2011, The Wood
in Your Food, para, 2). Among other things the cellulose is used in many things probably more
than I can list in this paper, as it is something that can be changed in thousand ways and given a
thousand different names, and to track all of the uses in food would be incredibly difficult.
Overall I choose this as my project not because it was something like genetically modified
organisms that can cause cancer or mercury in fish, or even something like gluten that really has
a lot of coverage, I choose this because its something that really should be watched and
understood better as when we read our ingredients for something trivial as gluten, dairy free, or
sugar free, we dont look at the weird and hard to pronounce middle ingredients that are the

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things that make the processed food that we eat today the food that they are as they are big lies in
front of us as they lie through fancy wording making us choose something that we would never
ingest if we knew exactly what it is. To simply to put it we need to know more about what our
food is and what exactly means for our health as we overlook so many ingredients that do go into
our food.

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Annotated Bibliography
Aubrey, A.(July 10, 2014).From McDonalds To Organic Valley, Your Probably Eating Wood
Pulp. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/07/10/329767647/frommcdonalds-to-organic-valley-youre-probably-eating-wood-pulp
I used this cite the wide variety of foods that use cellulose as a substitute. Its writing and
information fives a good scope for the entire subject of wood in food as it list off all the
foods that have cellulose and then proceds to explain what they are used for in a
vernacular that can be understood without have ever having to know science in any
depth.
Jia, J., Yu, B. Wu, L., Wang, H., Wu, Z. Li, M., Huang, P., Feng, S., Chen, P., Zheng, Y.,
Peng, L.(2014).Biomass Enzymatic Saccharification Is Determined by the Non-KOHExtractable Wall Polymer Features That Predominately Affect Cellulose Crystallinity in
Corn. Plos ONE , 9(9), 1-10. Doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0108449
I choose this article because of its recent publication an point that this is a current issue
with food. Another point I choose this article was that it make about what the wood or
cellulose in the food does to your food.
Poisuo, P. ( September 11, 2011). The 6 Most Horrifying Lies The Food Industry is Feeding

You. Retrieved from http://www.cracked.com/article_19433_the-6-most-horrifying-lies-

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food-industry-feeding-you.html
I used this article as it is a great article as it writes in a way that appeals to most people
and the common man as It really doesnt use scholarly wording and vernacular to make a
scholarly point, and this article is also what intro duced me into the idea for my project as
this article was adapted from its original text to video that I saw. This article is also an
excellent article in my opinion as it cover a variety if food topics and why we should care
in a sensible manner.
Osman, M,A,. El Shamrany, A.A., Alamri, M. S., Al-Assaf,A.H.,El-Othman, A. A., & Babiker,
E. E. (2014).EFFECT OF DIFFERENT SOURCES OF DIETARY FIBER ON
GROWTH APPARENT DIGESTIBILLITY OF PROTIEN FAT AND ENERGY AND
PROTEIN UTILIZATION IN RATS, JAPS: Journal Of Animal & Plant & Sciences,
24(2), 425-429.
This article is great to explain what happens when the chemically altered cellulose is
ingested by humans and animals. Also this article is great to explain what exactly
cellulose is. Along with that it also tells how the cellulose is going to act in the digestion
tract.
Rhodes, J. (May 17 2011).The Wood in Your Food. Smithsonian online magazine art and
culture . Retrieved from http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-wood-in-yourfood-173348226/?no-ist
I choose this article because it gave me more information than I got from anywhere else
and that the article seemed scholarly because of the high esteem of the publisher. Plus It
provided info that not even Wikipedia could provide

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Turbank, A. F., Snyder, F. W., Sandberg, K. R..(July 27, 1982).Patent no.US 4341807
A.Washington, DC : U.S. Patent And trademark Office.
I used this patent for the reason to show that this is in fact something that is a real. That
cellulose has at least existed since the early 80s and has a staple in food since then. Also whats
inside the food?