69ron said:
Amor_fati, then why doesn't it say it's food safe on the box? If their food safe baking soda was made from it, then it would also be food safe and it would be cheaper.
They could sell more without changing the price by saying it was food safe on the box. It could then be used in the wine industry and they’d make a fortune selling it at that price. Sodium carbonate that is food safe which the wine industry uses costs more. There must be a reason for it.
It just doesn’t add up.
Depends on the quality controls implemented in production, especially the services of inspectors to ensure that it's compliant with food-safety legislation. They produce baking soda that isn't advertised as food-safe, but it's doubtful that the non-food-safe stock is produced any differently than the food-safe stock. It doesn't appear that the company even bothers producing sodium carbonate advertised as food-safe, as there isn't much demand for it. SWIM's guess would be that it's cheaper to simply put part of their stock of baking soda and their stock of sodium carbonate directly onto store shelves without going through channels to certify it as food-safe.
From Arm and Hammer:
Baking Soda, alias sodium bicarbonate, is a naturally occurring substance that is found in all living things, where it helps regulate their pH balance. ARM & HAMMER® Baking Soda is made from soda ash, also known as sodium carbonate. To make ARM & HAMMER® Baking Soda, the soda ash is mined in the form of an ore called trona. The soda ash is then dissolved into a solution through which carbon dioxide is bubbled and sodium bicarbonate precipitates out, forming "Pure, Safe and Natural" ARM & HAMMER® Baking Soda.
My main question would be, what else would possibly be in the sodium carbonate? If it's meant to be used on clothes and the company prides themselves on their products being "pure, safe, and natural," my guess is they wouldn't want anything in it that could affect clothing or cause irritation to the person wearing the clothes, so what impurities could possibly be in this product?
69ron said:
The box even says it may be harmful is swallowed, so they are specifically warning people not to ingest it.
No where does the box mention anything about using it to make pretzels, or any other food that sodium carbonate is commonly used for. The box even says it may be harmful if swallowed, so they are specifically warning people not to ingest it.
Food-grade limonene may be harmful if swallowed, as well, and says so on the label, even though it's obviously safe in minute amounts. Mrs. Wages pickling lime doesn't seem to say this, but it does say that it may cause burns and irritation to wet skin--I would take this to mean harmful if swallowed. The point being that it's not the product specifically that's harmful if swallowed, but the chemical in general. Would you swallow food-grade lye? I certainly wouldn't and nor would I swallow sodium carbonate, except in very small amounts, as it's present in all baked goods that call for baking soda (the release of carbon dioxide is one of the specific purposes for its use). I'm fairly certain that the process of curing, whether using lye or sodium carbonate, doesn't result in a whole lot of residual base in the final food product, either.
SWIM's convinced that "food-grade" labeling of products generally has more to do with the bureaucracy of inspections and legal compliance and marketing than with actual material factors in cases like these. There's likely little to no difference between the sodium carbonate found in the grocery store and that found in the lab, considering that the process and source is likely the same, and the only difference between food-grade and technical-grade is its certification as such, especially considering that technical grade must be chemically pure. Pure sodium carbonate is safe enough for SWIM's purposes, whether found in the lab, as a curing product, or as a cleaning product, as chemical purity is the only reasonable concern for SWIM in the matter.
