I have little patience for the nouveau-riches trying to tell us how to
live, being the above mentioned lady or Brigitte Bardot who smokes two
packs of cigarettes a day, loves foie gras and who is trying to tell Inuits
(aka eskimos) that they have been living in sin for thousands of years
because they have been trying to make a living off available resources.
Those who don't want anything to do with gelatin are in for a few
sacrifices. Start by giving up the clothes on your back (yes gelatin is
used extensively by the textile industry) and most types of shoes, belts,
purses, etc.
Then make sure you don't get sick as you'll have to give up on hundreds of
types of medication. Abandon many types of papers as well, to read or write
on. Give up on ice cream and many if not most types of foods available in
grocery stores.
You'll have to give up on windows (yes it is used to make glass),
protective paint on your walls and countless of articles, not to mention
beer, wine, cosmetics. I'll get back to the word "cosmetic" in a moment.
Then you have to remember that when you give up on something, you have to
use something else. In the case of paper, this can be melamine, already
used extensively in the (photo grade) paper manufacturing industry. From
what I know, the process uses tons of formaldehyde, a wellknown carcinogen.
Back to cosmetics. Few people know that one of the raw products used by
millions of cosmetic customers actually comes from... septic tanks!
Including my own! One of the largest manufacturers of cosmetics raw
products is in Saint John, New Brunswick, where they export the processed
you know what to many major manufacturers around the world. I don't know if
what they produce is a substitute for or added to gelatin, but in the words
of my septic system provider: "If women only knew what they're putting on
their faces..." Of course, the material in question must be processed,
purified, whatever, but still...
Gelatin is an extremely complex organic material with unique photographic
properties described in thousands of pages of scientific journals. While
many colloids have been proposed as substitutes over the years, none comes
close to replace it, and all of them, in their manufacturing process,
aren't entirely green anyway.
Luis Nadeau
NADEAUL@NBNET.NB.CA
Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada
> Gum does not suffer from this drawback (well, that's for the printing;
> modern film uses animal gelatine).
>
> As a question for those who know better, can vegetarians substitute
> gelatine with non-animal gels, such as agar-agar or carragheen (sp?) ?
> Any special properties of gelatine?
>
> Thanks
> Olivo (who loves meat, but this sort of issue make him very curious)