Xanthum Gum is an Allergen~ Don't Eat This

Whatever you may think about the very wide use of a gum derived from a cabbage-rotting bacterium in food manufacture, if you are highly allergic/intolerant to corn, wheat, soya or dairy you should be concerned about what medium the gum was grown on as it is possible that residual protein fractions from the growing medium may make it through into the gum. The problem here is that, as of now, it is almost impossible to discover what growing medium might have been used for any specific batch of gum and although corn is probably the most common, it is certainly not universal.

A post from Wendy Cohan on celiac.com suggests that xanthan gum itself can cause an allergic reaction which is very similar to a coeliac reaction, except without the pain e.g. bloating, gas and diarrhoea. (She advises using guar gum instead, a more natural product in that it is just the ground starchy part of the guar bean.)

However, xanthan gum is an efficient laxative according to a 1993 study from the University of Sheffield, so it might well be responsible for gassy and diarrhoea symptoms. There is also the possibility that, since it is a fermented product, it could affect someone who was super-sensitive to mold.


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