Food & Drink
FinanceQuorn Controversy
More: Allergies, fungus, meat alternatives, meat substitute, mold, quorn, vegetarian, veggie burgers
During a recent grocery shopping trip, I decided to pick up a box of frozen Quorn Chicken Patties. I had previously heard good things about Quorn on vegetarian cooking shows and the packaging was full of appealing healthy phrases like “Low In Fat”, “0g Trans Fat”, “High In Protein”, “High In Fiber”.
My son and I had Quorn burgers for dinner that night and we were pleasantly suprised by how good they tasted- just like chicken! I was thrilled to have found such a tasty new meat substitute to add to our vegetarian meal rotation. My happiness was short lived when both my son and I started having stomach aches. My son had it worse than me. He said he felt like he was going to puke. I felt like I had swallowed a lead brick that kept on expanding. I went online to look up exactly what is in Quorn.
The official Quorn website states that Quorn is a mycoprotein and that there are 600,000 types of fungi in the world, including a wide variety of mushrooms, truffles and morels. That didn’t sound all that bad. They made it seem like Quorn is a mushroom burger. Wrong!
The mycoprotein that is in Quorn is called “Fusarium Venenatum”. It is a moldy fungus that is grown in large fermentation tanks by the Quorn corporation. Under certain conditions, “Fusarium venenatum” can morph into toxins known as trichothecene mycotoxins, causing nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Quorn products have sickened hundreds of people. CSPI has been gathering their sickening stories and sharing them on their website. They also are pushing for the removal of Quorn products from store shelves.
After finding all of that out, I thank my lucky stars that we didn’t have an extreme allergic reaction. If I had known about the true ingredients in Quorn, I would have never tried it! We will be avoiding Quorn like the plague in the future and will be sticking to the veggie burger brands that that are mold and fungus free.
[http://www.cspinet.org/quorn/]
[http://www.quorn.us//cmpage.aspx?section=WhatIsQuorn]
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April 17th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Thanks for this post. I was sickened very badly by Quorn, and initially thought it may have been to poorly handled frozen foods. Now that I read that the organism is Fusarium venenatum, my reaction must have been attributed to that! I got so sick that my kidneys hurt!!! I don’t think I’ll be trying it a second time to confirm the reaction either! OUCH!!
April 21st, 2008 at 7:43 am
I for one, go out of my way to avoid eating mold.
April 21st, 2008 at 4:30 pm
MW: Sorry to hear that Quorn made you sick. You can report your allergic reaction here: http://www.cspinet.org/quorn/form.html
May 5th, 2008 at 8:10 am
I find the selective suspension of suspicion regarding food pretty laughable–I mean, if we’re going to call for Quorn to be pulled off of grocery store shelves, shall we also remove cheese, yogurt, beer, wine, etc? Cheese and yogurt of quality are actually teeming with bacteria. Penicillin is made from mold.
An allergic reaction can happen to foods that are seemingly “pure” or those that have a “yuck” factor in their production. While thousands of people have deadly allergies to nuts, we don’t do much to ensure that factories which produce every kind of food are nut-free, even though exposure to nuts in even the most miniscule quantities can be equivalent to ingesting arsenic, with anaphylaxis leading to death in minutes.
So where’s the no nuts/no cheese lobby? What makes Quorn special?
October 23rd, 2008 at 9:37 am
Quorn is this vegetarian’s best friend. Unlike the vast sea of awful tasting, crappy textured soy and wheat gluten products out there, Quorn actually tastes good and has a texture not unlike the real thing. Yes, shockingly, one out of 150,000 consumers has an adverse reaction to the ingredients on Quorn. If you are one of those individuals, I invite you not to eat it. But there are 400 times as many people (one in 350) who have an adverse reaction to soy.
Educate yourself before you write this alarmist clap-trap!