http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/14/health/14FUNG.html?tntemail0

What's in Those Nuggets? Meat Substitute Stirs Debate

By DENISE GRADY

uropeans have been eating Quorn — Quorn nuggets, Quorn cutlets, Quorn patties — for 16 years. And, yes, many say it tastes like chicken.

Quorn — named for a British village and manufactured in the north of England — is a meat substitute made from a kind of a fungus, grown in giant fermentation tanks and processed into a low-fat, protein-rich substance that has some of the texture of meat. Twenty million Europeans have tried it, buying nearly a billion portions, according to the manufacturer, Marlow Foods, which is owned by AstraZeneca, a leading drug company based in London.

Now Quorn has come to America. Since January, Americans have bought half a million boxes in health food stores and supermarkets, at an average of $3.79 each. But Quorn has managed to infuriate competitors, fungus experts and a food safety group, who say Marlow Foods is not quite telling the truth about what's in those nuggets.

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A major sore point is Quorn's labeling, which says its chief ingredient "comes from a small, unassuming member of the mushroom family."

Three scientists who study fungi, or mycologists, from Penn State University say calling the source of Quorn a mushroom "is analogous to calling a rat a chicken because both are animals." True, a mushroom is a fungus, and so is quorn, but there the resemblance ends, they insist. Quorn is made from a fungus that they say is "more accurately described as a `mold.' "

In the world of biology, fungi rate their own kingdom, alongside the plant kingdom and the animal kingdom. There are thousands of members, including many edible ones like mushrooms, morels, truffles, yeast and the mold that makes blue cheese. But there are also less reputable relatives, like the ones that lurk in shower stalls.

The fungus that makes Quorn is Fusarium venenatum. Food scientists looking for a new source of protein found it in the ground near a wheat field in Buckinghamshire, England, in 1967, according to Marlow Foods. It grows in dirt and on grain, forming fine filaments and sometimes pinkish fuzz. It never sprouts anything that looks even remotely like a mushroom, and it belongs to a group of fungi far removed from mushrooms. The fungal filaments are a bit like muscle fibers and give Quorn the texture of meat, its maker says.

"It's not that there's something inherently wrong with fungus," said Dr. Michael Jacobson, the director of a food safety group, the Center for Science in the Public Interest. "But if it's fungus let them say it's fungus." His group has complained to the Food and Drug Administration that Quorn's labeling is deceptive and has asked hundreds of store managers to stop selling it unless it is relabeled.

Dr. Jacobson said other companies that made meat substitutes and vegetarian dishes were worried that Quorn would give them all a bad name.

"I think they're concerned about the debasement of veggie burgers," Dr. Jacobson said. "Jay Leno is going to call them fungus burgers and ultimately that could hurt them."

The American Mushroom Institute also took issue with the use of the word "mushroom."

"This product is not a mushroom," said Laura Phelps, a spokeswoman. "Let's say consumers don't like this product, or it makes them sick. We don't want it reflecting on our product because it's not the same thing."

Gardenburger, based in Portland, Ore., and one of Quorn's competitors in the veggie burger market, asked the Food and Drug Administration last month to prohibit Marlow Foods from labeling Quorn as related in any way to mushrooms. Gardenburger, which puts real mushrooms in its meatless patties, says Quorn's label is misleading and may be damaging to other companies that "legitimately use mushrooms."

David Wilson, vice president and general manager of Quorn Foods, the American subsidiary of Marlow, said, "Frankly, it's a trivial issue."

He said Quorn's labeling clearly identified the main ingredient as mycoprotein, or protein from a fungus. But since most people do not know what mycoprotein is, he said, "we tend to asterisk it, `mushroom in origin.' "

"We don't actually say this is a mushroom product," Mr. Wilson continued. "By using `mushroom in origin' it really helps consumers understand what mycoprotein is and relates it to a familiar food. And if they have any sensitivities to mushroom, it's a helpful reference point."

The mycologists also raised concerns about Quorn's safety. Dr. David M. Geiser, director of the Fusarium Research Center at Penn State, said by e-mail, "There really isn't anything closely related that people have been eating in large quantities."

Yeast and morels are related to Fusarium, Dr. Geiser said, but not closely; in evolution, they probably separated hundreds of millions of years ago. Distinct organisms have different proteins. And so, Dr. Geiser said, Quorn may contain proteins that people have not eaten before, and some may be allergic to it.

Another concern is that under certain conditions, Fusarium venenatum can produce poisons called trichothecene mycotoxins, which can cause nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Dr. Geiser said tests should be done to make sure that no fungal toxins are present in Quorn. In their letter to the F.D.A., he and his colleagues said, "In our opinion, more work needs to be done to ensure that this product is safe."

In an interview, Dr. Geiser said he had tried Quorn himself, and liked it. In terms of safety, he said, "It's probably fine. But probably isn't good enough."

Mr. Wilson countered that millions of people had eaten Quorn in the past 16 years, with few problems. In documents submitted to the F.D.A., Marlow Foods said it had received 92 complaints about adverse reactions in 1999, and 89 in 2000. Most involved stomach problems; only about 5 percent were genuine food allergies. The company said that those figures translated into rates of 1 in 130,000 and 1 in 146,000 consumers, and that the incidence of allergic reactions was far lower than that for more common foods like soy products and fish or shellfish.

Mr. Wilson also said the growing conditions were carefully controlled to make sure no toxins were produced, the product was tested, and the company had never had to throw a batch away.

But Dr. Jacobson said that many adverse reactions to food were never reported, and that the real rate of problems from Quorn was probably higher. He said his group had already received about half a dozen complaints from people who had eaten Quorn. Four had vomiting or diarrhea, one had facial tingling and numbness, and one had a potentially more serious reaction involving hives and breathing difficulty. But the reports did not prove that Quorn was what made the people sick.

Dr. Jacobson said that Quorn should not be on the market "until the company can show that it does not cause vomiting and diarrhea."

The Food and Drug Administration is still considering an application that Marlow Foods first submitted in 1986, asking to have Quorn approved as a food additive. Over the years, the F.D.A. kept asking the company for more data. But in the meantime, Quorn was already on the market in Europe and was eaten by so many people that last year the F.D.A. agreed Marlow could market it here under another category "generally recognized as safe," the same term that applies to sugar and salt and many other foods that people have been eating for a long time.

The F.D.A. still plans to rule on the food additive application, said Dr. Alan Rulis, director of its office of food additive safety. He said the agency was going ahead with the application because "the food additive here has some analytical methodologies everyone has to use to produce it safely to make sure there are no mycotoxins, and this would allow us to publish a regulation in the code, in the Federal Register, that would let us publish all the procedures."

Dr. Rulis declined to say when the ruling would come, or whether the agency was planning to say yes or no to Quorn.

But the makers of Quorn are confident that their product is safe and that Americans want it. "We think there's an enormous potential in the U.S. market," Mr. Wilson said. "It's the American psyche. They want to try things that are new and different."
 

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