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A Tale Of Two Foods

Daily Harvest, a brand renowned for its vegan frozen meals, got into some hot water last year when several hundred people fell ill after consuming their French Lentil + Leek Crumbles. As of October 2022, a total of 393 adverse illness reports from 39 states were recorded, leading to 133 hospitalizations. The puzzling part? The FDA couldn't pinpoint the cause.

But now, it seems experts have found the culprit: Tara flour. New research suggests a possible connection between this flour and the reported health problems. But, it's not the flour itself — it's a specific nonprotein amino acid it contains called baikiain.

Baikiain, a compound unfamiliar to many of us (I had to Google it), is a sort of twin to the amino acid proline. In bacteria, it helps break down proline. The question researchers are trying to answer is whether it might do the same in humans, potentially leading to liver toxicity.

To test this, the researchers exposed mice to baikiain — and the results weren't good. This finding led to a working theory: baikiain, after being metabolized in the body, may become a toxic substance that affects the liver and gallbladder. Depending on genetic predispositions, this effect could vary from person to person.

Daily Harvest’s French Lentil + Leek Crumbles were sent to around 26,000 customers, leading to 400 cases of adverse effects. More than 100 were seriously affected, some even requiring surgery.

So, what's the lesson we can learn from all this? Beware of weird vegan foods you’ve never heard of. I mean, what is a French leek and lentil crumble anyway?

All jokes aside, we need better testing of food ingredients, especially when it is a new, heavily processed food ingredient we don’t usually consume. Tara flour is considered GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) for human consumption by the FDA. But is that really the case if it sent 100 people to the hospital and even forced some people to get surgery?

Now compare this to the FDA’s stance on something like raw milk. Last year, a study published by the CDC labeled raw milk as dangerous and unsafe for human consumption. While it's true that raw milk can cause more illnesses than pasteurized milk (when you consider how many people drink each type), the risk is often blown out of proportion. Foodborne illness can come from various food types, not just dairy. And dairy products rank at the bottom of the list for causing such illnesses.

According to a recent review, foodborne illnesses from produce, poultry, and seafood far outstrip those from dairy products. We're talking about thousands of people falling ill from these sources each year, while raw milk has not been linked to a single death since the mid-1980s. The data shows you have about a 1 in 6 million chance of being hospitalized from drinking raw milk.

That’s right — those fancy French leek and lentil crumbles celebrities are peddling can send you into surgery, but it’s whole foods like raw milk we should be afraid of. None of it makes any sense.

The key takeaway? The situation with Daily Harvest and tara flour shows the need for an overhaul of the FDA's GRAS program. The FDA must work with lawmakers and reassess old food safety decisions in light of new science, ensuring our food's safety while balancing the freedom for people to access foods that we, as humans, have been consuming for thousands of years. Why vilify things like raw milk while simultaneously playing fast and loose with weird new, processed ingredients like Tara flour?

It’s almost as if the entire system is biased toward processed foods from wealthy corporations and against whole foods that would support local producers.

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