Traditional Dutch smoked sausage at risk of disappearing: ‘bad for your health’
Come rain or shine: a steaming, creamy plate of stamppot with a smoked sausage is always a good idea. But panic: the traditional Dutch smoked sausage is under fire. Will we still be able to eat smoked sausage with our stamppot?!
Worst-case scenario
Stamppot without sausage? For me, that’s a worst-case scenario. And yes, of course: these days you can buy vegetarian versions of the classic smoked sausage, but so far they don’t exactly get me excited. But what exactly is going on that we even have to talk about something as vulgar as vegetarian smoked sausages?
Harmful smoke flavoring
Well: the name ‘smoked sausage’ is somewhat misleading. Factory-made smoked sausages, such as the famous Unox sausages—which produce 16 million (!) a year at the factory in Oss—haven’t actually been smoked for around fifty years, because smoking the sausages over an open fire was thought to have undesirable environmental and health effects. That’s why they are boiled first, after which a special smoke flavoring is added to the sausages.
And you can probably guess what comes next… it turns out that very smoke flavoring could be life-threatening; research by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) concludes that the smoke flavoring contains harmful substances. It could cause cancer and make you infertile, according to Hart van Nederland.
Snackspert tests Lidl’s sauerkraut and smoked sausage sandwich
I don’t know how many smoked sausages you would have to eat to actually notice these harmful effects, but it’s clearly a serious matter, as evidenced by the possibility of a ban on smoked sausage as we know it. The European Commission wants to ban the use of smoke flavorings in food as of July 1. A special committee will vote on it this Wednesday.
Unox, now what?!
“If a ban on the use of the current smoke flavorings does indeed come into force, we expect there to be a transition period. That will give us enough time either to develop alternative smoke flavorings or to come up with other solutions to preserve the current flavor,” said a Unilever spokesperson.
We’ll keep an eye on it.
Also read:
- The trick for the perfect stamppot
- It’s been researched: eating sushi makes you smarter
- How to organize a sushi party at home
