Most of the time you can neither taste or smell it – but it’s there, hidden in many foods where we’d all least expect it: alcohol.

In Germany companies only have to designate food as containing alcohol if there is more than 1.2 percent of it in the product. Any amount less than that isn’t required to be listed on the packaging. For loosely sold products like freshly baked goods, it’s not necessary to tell consumers that there is alcohol inside. So it’s worth asking when you’re at the bakery. Often manufacturers prefer to use other names for alcohol like “ethanol” or “wine vinegar” on lists of ingredients. And although such small quantities of alcohol aren’t harmful to our bodies, it’s not good, for instance, for children to get used to the taste of alcohol at such a young age. That’s why it’s even more questionable when products designed for children – like cookies or after-school snacks – contain alcohol. A study by Austria’s Agency for Health and Food Safety found that only two of 19 the candies tested did not contain alcohol.

Since the mere taste of alcohol could trigger a relapse for alcohol-dependent people who have gone “dry”, these foods could even be questionable for them. When you use barcoo, it will automatically give you a warning if the product you’ve scanned contains “hidden” alcohol.

Tags: alkohol, lebensmittel, verbaucherschutz

You can follow the comments to this post via the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment or set a trackback.