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Kids snacks and school packs
Children's snacks concentrate the additives people actually argue about: gelatin, carmine, E471, vanilla in icing.
Two-minute lunchbox check
- Sweets and yogurt first. Gelatin and carmine (E120) are the usual red flags.
- Then the biscuit. E471, DATEM and L-cysteine hide in supermarket bread and biscuits.
- Then flavouring. Natural flavouring and vanilla extract are carrier questions.
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Source-dependentE441
Gelatin
The single most important ingredient to check in processed food. Gelatin is a protein boiled from animal skin, bones and connective tissue — and in We…
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DisputedE120
Carmine (cochineal)
A red dye crushed from cochineal insects. The majority of scholars and most certifiers rule it haram; a minority permit it. This is a genuine disagree…
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DisputedE904
Shellac
The shine on chocolate raisins, jelly beans and coated tablets comes from a resin secreted by the lac insect. Whether that makes it haram is a live di…
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Source-dependentE471
Mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids
The emulsifier in bread, ice cream, margarine and peanut butter. The same E-number covers palm-oil production and pig-fat production, and food law doe…
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Source-dependentE472e
DATEM (diacetyltartaric esters of mono- and diglycerides)
A bakery emulsifier in the E472 family. Halal when the mono- and diglycerides are from plant oil; haram from pork fat. The E-number does not tell you …
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Source-dependentE920
L-Cysteine
The additive that makes commercial bread dough workable. Its cheapest historical source was human hair — which is why this otherwise obscure amino aci…
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Disputed
Vanilla extract
Real vanilla extract is vanilla beans steeped in alcohol and water. Whether that alcohol carrier matters is one of the most genuinely contested questi…
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Source-dependent
Natural flavors
'Natural flavor' is the least informative word pair on the label — a regulated term that covers hundreds of compounds, some animal-derived, many alcoh…
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Source-dependentE422
Glycerin (glycerol)
A sweet humectant that keeps foods moist. The molecule is identical whether it came from palm oil or pig fat — which is exactly why the source has to …
A procedure for reading a pack - not a product certification and not a fatwa. See the methodology.