2001feb05. Mail.
hi, the link to the haw flakes page
is not working. Could you let me know what haw is exactly. I love to eat
the candy and what to know what it is i am eating. also i heard a rumor
that the FDA has banned haw flakes, do you know anything about that?
thanks for your time,
bri
Haw flakes are made from the Hawthorne fruit. I responded to the FDA concerns awhile ago in email to someone else. Here I reprint the mail exchange and append notes to it:
are you sure that the dye contained in haw flakes is the safe one? check out this page (link no longer works) on the FDA site which seems to indicate otherwise. – andy
That page chronicles the US detention of haw flakes (and slices) from a company named “Zibo Minyue Food Co., Ltd.”The two companies that I have purchased haw flakes from (and are discussed on other pages) are named “Shan Zha Bing,” and “Sunflower.”Now, perhaps Zibo Minyue owns or is somehow responsible for the product for each or both of these companies. I don’t know. More contact and background information about Zibo Minyue is available at this page (which is no longer up, of course), which will cause anyone familiar with the Tufte school of visualization to twitch uncontrollably.
But considering the content of the page, as difficult as that is to do, it appears that Zibo Minyue is a new company, whereas the haw flakes from Shan Zha Bing and Sunflower certainly look, from the packaging alone (this is Sunflower; if I remember correctly, Shan Zha Bing looks mysteriously the same minus said flower on the top of the package) as if they've been around forever. And hey, the package lists only two ingredients: haw, and sugar. As I mentioned in the article, the color is completely unappetizing – it looks like some new company figured on eliminating this roadblock to increased sales but their zeal has defeated them! DEFEATED THEM I TELL YOU!
It may be the case that the FDA has actually banned haw flakes “for good,” but the Chinese grocery stores wouldn’t sell them if that was true. The FDA has definitely detained haw flakes, from different manufacturers, for an “unsafe color” – one instance is detailed above; I have seen two others. I have not seen the two most common haw flakes brands detained. I am also aware that MANY different products are detained by the FDA for various reasons (food-borne illness is really hot lately), it just seems that everyone is more aware of foreign products being detained. The Sunflower brand uses FD&C Red #40, which is legal (more info: here). There are various other people on the internet who are blindly passing along the FDA rumor. Personally, after reading about FD&C Red #40, I am no longer going to be eating haw flakes – I have been attempting to eliminate synthetic flavorings from my meals, and propylene glycol doesn’t sound too appetizing (again, this is a common food coloring in the US and is, in the government’s view, “safe”; this is not the color people are speaking of when they mention that haw flakes are “banned” by the FDA). In the end, you will have to make your own decision regarding the consumption of haw flakes.