I recently discovered Ratio and I love that it packs 25g protein into a little portable 5oz cup. With lots of fruit flavors and decent taste, it seems like a nice adjunct despite definitely falling into the processed foods category. Even my kids like it, including the ultra-picky toddler. But then I just recently fell down a rabbit hole about the possible carcinogenic and pro-inflammatory effects of carrageenan… now I’m a bit torn on whether this snack should make a routine appearance in our fridge. Certainly there are other alternatives, like Oikos Pro or other Greek yogurts. Ratio technically isn’t even a yogurt; it calls itself a “dairy snack.” I’m curious what other people think of this and whether the concerns about carrageenan are legit or if its not anything to be concerned about.
I don’t think there’s good evidence to link carrageenan as it is typically consumed to health problems. I don’t know anything about this particular food product, but if carrageenan is your concern, I don’t share that.
Thank you for the response. Yes, that was my main worry. I know that you don’t typically like to extrapolate animal models to humans when it comes to real world applications, but there does seem to be some reasonable evidence that it is a carcinogen in animals. No human data, but I don’t know how such a study could be ethically conducted, so we will likely never see it. Thanks again.
Actually, a pretty decent amount of human data available using case-control studies, e.g. pick a condition, then look at a group eating/doing a lot of the variable of interest vs a group doing/eating little to none. Pretty messy data in humans because this particular food additive is mostly in ultra-processed foods, which by and large (but not always) suck.
I think that the animal evidence is good for hypothesis generating, but it also should be placed into context, e.g. are these animals consuming a similar amount (relative to BW or size) as a human would? If not, as is the case here, it’s more just hypothesis generating. Certainly some human data showing exposure is bad at high levels, but again this is mostly related to intake of ultra-processed food, not carrageenan itself.
Anyway, that’s my take!