Answer: Yes. Pepperidge Farm puff pastry is vegan.
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Is Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry Vegan?
It contains ingredients like unbleached enriched wheat flour, water, salt, turmeric and annatto extracts, hydrogenated oils, high fructose corn syrup, etc. There are no animal by-products in this delicious treat.
Read along to determine if Pepperidge Farm pastries have trans fats, some downsides of eating the pastry, and the mystery behind high fructose corn syrup. And vegans, hold on to your seats and scroll on to find out some shocking facts about palm oil (found in many products that call themselves vegan).
“More Complicated” Answer
Pepperidge Farm is one of the most celebrated brands in the US, with their manufactured products available in your daily grocery stores. Unfortunately, not all their products are vegan, but their puff pastry is assuredly so.
Each serving has 4g of protein and 2g of fiber. These tasty pastries are also kosher-certified and are gluten-free.
Advantages of Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry
No Trans Fats
Pepperidge Farm pastries have no trans fats. Yeah, surprising. It’s like a dream come true for people with a sweet tooth trying to eat healthily.
Disadvantages of Trans Fats
The worst type of fat consumed by people is trans fat. As a result, the Food and Drug Administration recently prohibited manufacturers from mixing any primary source of artificial trans fats into drinks or foods.
These fats increase the risk of heart diseases, attacks, and strokes, which are the leading cause of death among adults. The more trans fats you consume, the greater your risk of diseases related to heart and blood vessels.
They raise your “bad” cholesterol and lower your “good” cholesterol.
Low-density lipoprotein (LDL) or “bad” cholesterol may gather in the walls of your arteries, causing them to become narrow and hard. At the same time, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) or “good” cholesterol transports excess cholesterol to your liver.
Any significant alterations in these levels may result in rupturing of the arteries. Blood clots might block blood flow to the heart or brain, ultimately leading to a heart attack or a brain stroke.
Palm Oil
Palm oil is the most common cooking oil throughout Asia and is compared to the highly acclaimed “healthy” olive oil due to its effect on blood cholesterol levels. Both have the same benefits, but liquid palm oil is much cheaper.
According to a human clinical study, palm tocotrienols have been found to reduce the risk of strokes. They minimize the expansion of white matter lesions (related to increased stroke risk) in the brain.
Clearing an Important Misconception
Don’t think that just because Pepperidge Farm puff pastry doesn’t have trans fats, it’s the healthiest option for you. Like most companies, Pepperidge Farm substitutes trans fats with hydrogenated palm, cottonseed, and soybean oils which contain high levels of saturated fats.
Saturated fats raise your overall cholesterol level, and in a healthy diet, 20% to 30% of your daily calories come from fats.
Tip
Try to maintain saturated fats at less than 10% of your total daily calories. Olive, peanut, and canola oils have monounsaturated fat, which serves as a healthier option. In addition, unsaturated omega-3 fatty acids found in fish and nuts are good sources of healthy fats.
Downsides
Two of the significant downsides of these puff pastries are that they have hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup.
High Fructose Corn Syrup
High fructose corn syrup has slithered into a lot of foods over the past few decades. Compared to sugar, HFCS proves to be sweeter, cheaper and quickly absorbed by the body.
Eating it in high quantities can lead to insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and high blood pressure. Mark Hyman, MD, a medical expert, explained the following ill effects:
Fat Production
Fructose has a low glycemic index and was thought suitable for diabetes. However, only the liver cells can process it. So fructose goes directly to the liver and starts a “fat production factory.”
It also triggers the production of cholesterol and triglycerides. In addition, according to Dr. Hyman, high doses of fructose form holes in your intestinal lining, causing a leaky gut. This allows foreign particles and bacteria proteins to enter your bloodstream, causing weight gain and type 2 diabetes.
Shoots Up Your Appetite
It promotes obesity more than sugar and contributes to diabetes, inflammation, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Over 90 million Americans are affected by excess fat in the liver.
“It can even cause fibrosis or what we call cirrhosis. Sugar in our diet is now the main cause of liver failure, making sugar the topmost cause of liver transplants,” says Dr. Hyman.
Fruits are an exception. The naturally occurring fructose in fruits doesn’t have the same effect as high fructose corn syrup. Fruits are packed with fiber, vitamins, minerals, and healing nutrients.
Hydrogenated Oils
Hydrogenated vegetable oil is a widely used ingredient used in multiple processed foods due to its low cost and long shelf life. However, it’s said to have some of the most significant and dangerous side effects besides cholesterol problems.
Alters Blood Sugar Levels
According to some research, hydrogenated oils harm blood sugar levels. The consumption of high levels of these saturated fats for an extended period results in a higher risk of type 2 diabetes.
Increases Inflammation
Acute inflammation is a typical immune response to protect the body from illness and infection, but chronic inflammation can contribute to heart conditions, diabetes, and cancer. According to studies, saturated fats in hydrogenated vegetables can increase inflammation in your body.
Why Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastries May Pose a Problem for Vegans
Ironically, vegans can see one of the advantages as a drawback. Pepperidge Farm puff pastries consist of palm oil, whose production is harmful to the environment and endangered species. Strict vegans avoid using palm oil products for these reasons. However, it’s entirely up to you.
Some of the ways the palm oil industry causes problems are:
Habitat Loss
Unsustainable palm oil production causes large-scale deforestation of tropical forests. In addition, it leads to the widespread loss of natural habitats for endangered species.
- Orangutans (critically endangered in Sumatra)
Indonesia and Malaysia are the world’s largest palm oil producers, amounting to 85% of them. They are the only existing habitats for Orangutans, and fewer than eighty thousand of them have been able to survive today.
- Sumatran elephants (endangered)
Sumatran is home to several large national parks and isn’t safe from getting destroyed illegally to produce palm oil. As a result, the elephant population declined at an alarming rate, with fewer than 300 surviving herds roaming, homeless, harassed, and killed.
- Bornean pygmy elephant (critically endangered)
This is the smallest of the Asian elephant subspecies in size, and only fifteen hundred of these live on Borneo, a place where palm production endangers their home every day.
- Sumatran rhinoceros
These are the smallest rhinos, close relatives of the woolly rhinos (extinct), and their population is unstable. In addition, poaching and destruction caused by palm oil production threaten their habitats.
- Sumatran tigers
They are the last of Indonesia’s tigers and are fewer than 400. They are holding onto the remaining few patches on the island.
Sumatran has lost half of its forests in the last 40 years because of deforestation and destruction to convert palm oil and pulp plantations.
Water and Soil Pollution
Palm oil mills generate a lot of effluents, causing freshwater pollution and affecting downstream biodiversity and people. A standard method to clear forests for plantations is burning. Smoke has adverse effects on people’s health in Southeast Asia.
The indiscriminate use of fertilizers, pesticides, and insecticides additionally pollute groundwater and surface water sources.
Climate Change
The conversion and draining of tropical peat forests of Indonesia concern the carbon per hectare stored by them. It is more than any other ecosystem in the world.
When forest fires are used during clearing, they release sequestered carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, adding to climate change.
Indonesia is the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases across the globe due to its high deforestation rate.
This website will help you discover some guidelines to help the cause.
Conclusion
Pepperidge Farm puff pastries are vegan and contain no animal or by-products directly. Puff pastries also lack trans fats, which affect human heart health and cholesterol levels. Trans fats increase “bad” cholesterol and decrease the “good” one.
