Once-Scorned Quorn Still Alive and Kicking
Today’s Dietitian
By Kate Jackson
Vol. 6, No. 8, p. 32

This controversial meat substitute seems to be surviving the heat. Read about the issues surrounding Quorn and how it has escaped getting burned.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit food-safety organization, knows how to capture attention. Over the years, CSPI has grabbed headlines and snagged sound bites with dire warnings about the evils that lurk in our foods—especially in new foods. Executive Director Michael F. Jacobson, PhD—the Ralph Nader of nutrition—has used his penchant for snappy phrases to skewer fast food, movie theater popcorn, Mexican food, and Chinese food. He’s tackled trans fats, Olestra, sulfites, and “food porn,” and he’s coined more than a few phrases that have found their way into the lexicon. Remember “heart attack on a plate” or “coronary in a cone”?

But according to Jacobson, the organization does much more than publicize issues. “CSPI was the main force behind the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act that resulted in Nutrition Facts labels and the main force urging the FDA to include trans fat on labels and getting restrictions placed on life-threatening sulfite preservatives,” he says.

CSPI has done more perhaps than any other group to raise awareness about true dangers in foods, reveal the food industry’s special interests, and educate Americans about better nutrition. Its campaigns are often dead on target, widely publicized, and highly effective, and its efforts have undoubtedly reduced waistlines, encouraged healthful eating, and prevented heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Although it often raises hackles—especially in the food industry—it’s earned more than a few accolades for its efforts.

In recent years, however, in a puzzlingly tenacious campaign, CSPI seems to stand more or less alone in taking aim against a meat substitute product until recently little-known in the United States called Quorn (pronounced kworn), first claiming that the “odious” mold product was mislabeled, then that it’s responsible for sickening consumers and producing severe allergic reactions—the latter a charge that seems to be largely dismissed by nutrition and allergy experts.

Jacobson says the FDA required the company manufacturing Quorn to revise its labels (still not enough to satisfy CSPI) and has been investigating the hundreds of reports of adverse reactions that CSPI has supplied the agency.

CSPI has called upon the FDA to ban the product and urged food chains to remove it from their shelves—a response many find peculiar since the organization takes no issue with the sale of foods that indisputably result in severe and even deadly allergic reactions to a much greater number of individuals, such as soy, shellfish, milk, and peanuts.
Despite CPSI’s charges in the United States (detailed on the agency’s Web site, www.cspinet.org), Quorn has been a successful meat alternative in Europe and appears to be winning over palates in America as well. Jacobson refutes this, claiming that Quorn competitors have told him that sales data indicate that Quorn has generally flopped in the United States.

A Fungus Among Us
Quorn meat-free foods are made from mycoprotein—an all-natural vegetable protein—and other natural ingredients. Jacobson refutes this as well, claiming that Quorn is not vegetable protein but virtually whole fungi. The mycoprotein (myco is Greek for fungi) in Quorn is cholesterol- and sodium-free, low in fat (particularly saturated fat), and contains all nine essential amino acids.

Foods made from Quorn have been available in Great Britain for more than a decade and had their beginnings in 1972 when mycoprotein, which was discovered in England growing in a Buckinghampshire field, was first recognized as an efficient protein source. Derived from Fusarium venenatum, mycoprotein development arose from the twin fears of population growth and inadequate food supplies.

Chemical and petroleum companies began exploring the potential of molds, bacteria, and yeasts to be enlisted as potential protein sources. Interest eventually focused on the promise of fungi, which are high in protein and familiar to consumers in the form of mushrooms and yeast. Fusarium venenatum beat out thousands of other fungi as a candidate for further investigation.

Although the larger effort to thwart global starvation through such research and development failed, investigation into mycoprotein continued. “Through the mid-1970s, extensive work was undertaken to test whether or not the organism was fit for human consumption and could be grown on a scale that would be economically viable to produce and sell. Extensive safety testing was implemented, and in 1985, the UK Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food granted approval for safe human consumption,” explained David Wilson, U.S. general manager and vice president of Quorn Foods (the U.S. subsidiary of the United Kingdom’s Marlow Foods), in an article in Food Technology. Approval in Europe followed. Food development was carried out in the 1980s, and a variety of products were introduced in the next decade.

You’re No Mushroom
When Marlow Foods introduced Quorn into the United States market in 2002, it described the product as a member of the fungus family—a relative of the mushroom. Jacobson insists this characterization is misleading. Says Wilson, “I think the media at the time found it fascinating that Americans were eating burgers that were made of fungus. That captured the imagination of the public and caught the attention of CSPI, which objected to the company’s likening of mycoprotein to a mushroom.” CSPI, says Wilson, charged that the product was not a relative of the mushroom but rather a fungus trying to masquerade as a mushroom and filed a deceptive labeling complaint with the FDA.

Although it did not believe it misrepresented its product, the company responded by adding language to the packaging to clarify that Quorn is in the fungus family in the same way mushrooms, morels, and truffles are. “When people come across our product and they want to know what it is, they need some familiar food reference point, and to simply say that it’s a fungi is not enough, so we tried to expand the language to clarify,” Wilson says.

Explains Cindy Moore, MS, RD, director of nutrition therapy at Cleveland Clinic Foundation, “Most food manufacturers try to take something that uses very technical terms and liken it to something else the consumer is already familiar with.” What the company was trying to do, she suggests, was clarify that the product is derived from a natural process and created much like yogurt is—through a fermentation process.

A Sickening Mold or a Health Food?
CSPI’s second allegation, recalls Wilson, was to try to undermine public perception of the product’s safety. It noted in a press release that “research in several medical journals has shown Quorn to be a powerful allergen and even an early double-blind clinical study conducted by its manufacturer proved that some people who ate Quorn suffered nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea.”

Wilson replies, “We found this completely ridiculous in that we’ve been selling our product now for maybe 20 years in Europe—have literally sold billions of portions—and our intolerance or sensitivity rate is incredibly low.” Jacobson characterizes Marlow’s data as grossly understated. In a CPSI survey, says Jacobson, 4% of the respondents said they were sensitive to Quorn—a higher percentage than people who said they were allergic to the various common food allergens.

Quorn, says Wilson, is a well-tolerated protein source that has been supported from the start by the U.K. and European equivalents of the FDA. The FDA, he adds, has been extremely supportive as well. “All the technical specialists that have looked at the evidence they’ve put forward and our self-reported evidence over the last 20 years have reached the same conclusion: There are going to be some people [who] show sensitivity to all protein sources, but the rate for mycoprotein is much lower than that of soy, shellfish, nut, or other protein sources,” says Wilson.

In a statement on August 12, 2002, Jacobson declared that “the FDA’s stance with regard to Quorn has been ‘get sick first, ask questions later.’” The product, he said, “was cavalierly waved through by the FDA with an alarming lack of curiosity…” Says Moore, “It took five years for this company to get approval from the FDA, so to me that’s neither cavalier nor quick.” According to Jacobson, the FDA has not approved Quorn but rather accepted it as a generally recognized as safe (GRAS) substance because although Quorn has yielded some adverse reactions, it has not caused “permanent, severe harm.” CSPI has challenged the GRAS status.

The Little Fungus That Could
The controversy appears to have died down, and Quorn has become what seems to be an unstoppable force in the meat substitute market. However, Jacobson says he is aware of sales data that contradict this claim. CSPI reported that 11 people claiming to become ill after eating Quorn expressed concern that Whole Foods markets continued to sell the product, even though CSPI informed the chain of these adverse reactions.

In 2002, CSPI also asked the FDA to ban the sale of Quorn after it solicited and received complaints about adverse reactions on its Web site, www.quorncomplaints.com. In a press release, CSPI indicated that 100 American and 500 British “victims of Quorn poisoning have filed reports.” These efforts, suggests Wilson, have had no effect. “Whole Foods was one of the earliest customers to take Quorn into their supermarkets, and it’s now one of our largest customers,” he says. “Its stores continue to stock new products and feature our products in promotions.” Among these new products are three “Simply Saute” meals (an Indian, a Thai, and a Mexican flavor) and Quorn meat-free meatballs, which can be used in spaghetti sauces and other dishes. And the FDA, repeats Wilson, takes no issue with Quorn.

Wilson notes that CSPI has been rather quiet about Quorn in the last year, issuing few aggressive complaints or press releases. “In the United Kingdom and Europe in the last 10 years, we’ve gone from a couple of million dollars of sales to more than $200 million retails sales, so there’s been a staggering growth in Europe. We’ve been in the United States now for just a couple of years, and we already have the No. 1 product in the natural foods market.”

Quorn is also low in net carbs, explains Wilson, so it can be incorporated into low-carb weight-management programs as well. As a result of these factors, he explains, the company has “distribution in more than 3,000 supermarkets across the country and heading toward $10 million in sales with literally hundreds of thousands of happy customers.”

A Dietitian’s Take
One of those happy customers is Moore, a national spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association. “I think it’s a great meat-free alternative. It’s a good source of fiber, polyunsaturated fatty acids, and high-quality protein,” she says. More importantly, she says, it tastes good. “You can have food that is nutritionally sound, but if it doesn’t taste good too, consumers won’t eat it. When you compare Quorn against some of the other products that are out there, it does have a distinctly different flavor profile, and the texture appeals to individuals [who] may want something closer to that which the meat product would have.” Quorn Foods’ taste tests have shown that not only do more than one-half of consumers prefer the company’s chicken-style nuggets to those of other brands, but they also prefer them to real chicken nuggets.

Studies of Quorn, Moore notes, have shown that it helps to reduce total and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and although they’ve been inconclusive, some studies suggest that it may help raise high-density lipoprotein cholesterol. Furthermore, its fiber content will help to reduce blood sugar levels after the meal, Moore adds. Indeed, research suggests that mycoprotein may be helpful in the dietary treatment of diabetes. In one study, not only was glycemia reduced postmeal, but also insulinemia.

Quorn, which Moore points out is not genetically modified in any way, is also a good product by virtue of its satiety value. Because people will eat it and feel full longer and thus eat less for the remainder of the day, she sees Quorn as a product that will help Americans in their battle against obesity. Severe studies back up her prediction, indicating a clear effect on “late satiety.”

For more information, visit www.quorn.com.

— Kate Jackson is a staff writer for Today’s Dietitian.

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