I recall several hullaballoos regarding fast food restaurants being accused of adding “filler” to their products - adding sawdust to taco meat, for example. Without getting into whether or not they actually did, it got me thinking; is there something I could safely add to my food to add volume without adding fat or calories? Adding sawdust to my taco meat, for example. Is there something like a food-grade cardboard I could add to my burgers? Has the FDA ever approved such a thing? Could you safely lose weight by watering down your meal with indigestible cellulose?
Why add food-grade cardboard when you can add food-grade food? Yes, there are calories in it, but you can’t add enough non-food to your food to have a real effect and still have it be edible.
@Exapno, yes, I am aware of TVP, it’s good stuff. However, I was interested in whether there was a sort of zero-content substance. TVP, as you point out, is good for you. It (obviously) contains protein and other nutritional qualities. This question isn’t really because I want to replace a large part of my diet with cardboard, it was more idle curiousity, and wondering why someone hasn’t marketed something like this as a diet aid - does the FDA prohibit it?
Yup. TVP is frequently added to cheap hamburgers, and the primary ingredient in veggie burgers. It’s in a lot of frozen foods now-a-days to keep the price low. Prefectly healthy, just no flavor. Other natural fillers like bone meal and grain have been used in sausages and prepared meats for ages. Fiber can be added also even if it has no direct nutritional value.
As long as your product is safe and properly labeled, the government would have no problem with it. Labeling could be a problem. Especially with meats and cheeses, there are some pretty strict naming standards. Here’s an example for Ham, taken from Wikipedia (bolding mine, to highlight the different terms):
The challenge from a marketing standpoint is that there’s only so much you can add before you start to compromise flavor and texture. I think the market is pretty representative of what we’re able to accomplish.
A number of diet aids have included indigestible fiber like psyllium which swells up in the stomach to give a person a feeling of fullness. As long as it’s labeled properly the FDA doesn’t have a problem with it. The problems come when you make claims about it’s effectiveness for losing weight or other medical utility.
It’s not done because you can’t do it and keep the food edible. If you take the taste out of food, most people won’t eat it even to lose weight. Look at the track record of low-protein, low-fat, low-salt or other reduced foods. Almost nobody will stay with them for the long-term without a serious medical reason. They taste awful. And so would your hypothetical half-sawdust food. It would taste like sawdust. And nobody will buy it.
Seriously, add it to taco meat, burgers, meatloaf… Soak it in hot water first, then add to the raw meat before cooking. It’s just like adding breadcrumbs or cracker crumbs to meatloaf.
Go easy on it at first. Most people do not get enough fiber in their daily diet, and if you overload your guts with a lot of fiber, you’ll get a POWERFUL belly ache!
~VOW