I started out this post speaking about the apparent use of a silicon-based chemical used by Pizza Hut’s cheese supplier, Leprino Foods. What I hadn’t noticed is that the article I got the information from was from several years ago. Upon further research, I found a follow-up article by Milkweed showing correspondence with Leprino stating they do not use the chemical for their cheese and the patent Milkweed listed was 18 years old. I’m not sure where Milkweed got their references, but this proves them to be less than reliable as a source of news. I apologize, readers, for this error.

The follow-up article is here (PDF)

You can find the original post after the jump.

An article printed in The Milkweed (download the pdf here or html version here) criticizes Pizza Hut’s main supplier of cheese, Leprino Foods, for the makeup of their “Pizza Cheese” product which Pizza Hut uses almost exclusively.

First of all, there is very little actual cheese in their product and as the article states, is laden with salt, starch and water and apparently doesn’t conform to FDA standards of identity for mozzarella. But this isn’t the main issue detailed in the article, though. Leprino Foods apparently uses a silicone-based industrial chemical, Polymethylsiloxane (toxicity report here), sold by Dow-Corning as “Antifoam FG 10.” It has no FDA approval for use on food, which means we shouldn’t ingest it, but it is liberally sprayed on their shredded “Pizza Cheese” product to help combat cooking and shelf-life issues presented by the high amount of starch added to the cheese product and artificially ages the “Pizza Cheese” faster than traditional methods.

The article seems fairly well written and even has “trail of evidence” and lists many patents filed by Leprino Foods, but I don’t automatically trust anything I read on the internet, so I did some searching for myself. When I looked at the Pizza Hut ingredients list (PDF), nothing listed seemed out of the ordinary. They have mozzarella, food starch, whey protein, milk and a preservative and don’t list the chemical at all, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. I went to the Leprino Foods website and found a page on their “Quality-Locked Cheese (QLC)” which seemed incredibly suspect based upon the name alone. I’ve tried to contact Leprino Foods regarding this claim, but it seemed everything but the static pages was down. I couldn’t email them, the contact page didn’t work and even the instructions for how to use the cheese product didn’t work, so for now I have no answers from them. As soon as I can get ahold of them, I will post their response. My preliminary search lead me next to nowhere, but I will keep this up and report back.

Read more here.