A fun fact about (checks notes, squints at clipboard) citric acid
One of the things you learn as a home cook is dietary restrictions. Everybody’s got ‘em. I, noted cilantro hater, have one. And so in the back of my head sits a permanent database of everybody’s dietary restrictions who frequent the space. There’s one person who is gluten- and dairy-free. There’s another who doesn’t do avocado, quinoa, or coconut. There’s someone I’m related to who can’t have citrus or cinnamon. Multiple vegans. Multiple celiac. I question nothing, of course, and make it all work.
One of my friends has a mold allergy, and wondered why they reacted to the randomest stuff in the world. The answer turned out, of course, to be citric acid, because of course it was citric acid.
You’d think citric acid is made from citrus. It’s in the name, right? And yes, technically citric acid can be made from citrus. In practice, however, we require too much citric acid as a society for that to be sustainable. Citric acid is an extremely common food additive & preservative. Most processed foods contain citric acid. It’s a common additive to medicines & cleaning products. It’s also a classic de-scaling agent for commercial water kettles, etc., and I own a high-end water kettle for coffee & tea reasons, because of course I do.
And so to meet demand, almost all commercially available citric acid is made as a byproduct of genetically engineered black mold. Science, am I right? Let’s collectively do something else!
I don’t usually have to worry about citric acid showing up in stuff because almost everything I make is from scratch. I do have to worry about some curry blocks and pastes. But also, I have the electric kettle, and everyone drinks from that stupid kettle. And so to protect my friend, I found this citric acid powder that claims to be made from actual plants, pinged the company, confirmed that it is in fact the real stuff, bought a shameful quantity of it, and gave half of it to my friend. It smells lovely, like makrut leaves. And my friend is happy.