Last week I happened to glance at the label on a bag of tea I was about to plunge into some nice hot water. I found the expected plant and spice bits on the list, but they were followed by something called soy lecithin. That was a little disturbing since I didn’t know what it was, and I’m generally suspicious of soy additives.
A little searching got me to a blog post titled They’re attacking my tea with soy lecithin dammit! Apparently someone else had the same reaction I did.
The real danger is the toxic Hexane that is used to process soy lecithin into something a company can sell to make money. The “stuff” that is chemically turned into soy lecithin is a by-product of the soy manufacturing process that is often dehydrated and then recolored with chemicals to make it lighter so that it can be added to foods to make them “smoother” and to act as an emulsifier to keep foods like butter or cake mix from separating and to make the cleaning of manufacturing equipment faster (i.e. for the non-stick properties).
Yeah, that doesn’t sound like the sort of thing I want in my drink. So I did a bit more searching.
It turns out that Bigelow Tea publishes a list of all their soy lecithin-free teas. Several of my favorites are on that list. Sadly, Celestial Seasonings has a FAQ entry that addresses this differently:
Soy lecithin is a soy-based emulsifier (used to keep ingredients from separating) found in the natural flavors we use in some of our teas. All products that contain soy lecithin are clearly labeled on our packages and the product pages on our website. If you have any questions about soy lecithin, please send us an email at consumerrelations@hain-celestial.com.
So they don’t publish a list of their teas. And the boil the whole thing down to “don’t worry, but contact us if you are concerned.”
I know which teas I’ll be drinking.
Keep an eye on those labels…
I actually take soy lechithin as a supplement. It contains phosphatidyl choline which Ray Kurzweil identifies as a substance present in our bodies that depletes as we age.
“When you’re young, your cell membranes have very high concentrations of it, but by the time you’re 90, you only have about 10 percent of it left. This depletion contributes to the brittle skin and poorly functioning organs experienced by the elderly.
“You can reverse that by supplementing with that substance,” Kurzweil says. “I take it every day orally. I take it intravenously once a month. It actually helps my skin. That’s an aging process that you can actually reverse right now.”
Yeah, I’ve read a few examples of people using it as a supplement. But my larger point still holds (I hope): it’s definitely something I want to know that I’m taking.