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The Muslim Consumer Group (MCG) is a U.S. non-profit organization founded in November 1993 by Syed Rasheeduddin Ahmed, based in Rolling Meadows, Illinois. Its goal was to educate Muslims about Halal foods and perform Halal certification, which was not done by any other organization in the United States at that time.
MCG first established its website in 2000 to educate Muslims throughout the world about the Halal status of food ingredients, E-numbers and food products. MCG has written a book, titled A Comprehensive List of Halal Food Products in U.S. and Canadian Supermarkets that lists food products and ingredients that are certified as Halal. MCG also visits mosques and religious centers in the United States to give educational presentations about food products, medicine, cosmetics, and personal care products.
A major breakthrough in R&D was the discovery of the source of L-Cysteine, which was being derived from human hair. Muslim dietary laws do not allow the ingestion of anything that is derived from the human body. It was found that there were several companies that were using this in their baked goods that varied from Naan, which was being supplied to Muslim stores in major U.S. cities, to donuts made by Dunkin' Donuts. A well known Halal food company, AlSafa, uses L-Cysteine in its chicken nuggets, chicken patties, and chicken strips. After MCG's publication of these findings, the source for the L-Cysteine was changed in a large part to chicken or duck feathers. It has not been confirmed that AlSafa uses chicken or duck feathers.
The H-MCG symbols are used by the Muslim Consumer Group to identify the Halal status of different edible and non-edible consumer products.
Flavor, flavour, or taste is the perceptual impression of food or other substances, and is determined primarily by the chemical senses of the gustatory and olfactory system. The "trigeminal senses", which detect chemical irritants in the mouth and throat, as well as temperature and texture, are also important to the overall gestalt of taste perception. The taste of food, can be altered naturally or artificially.
Food is any substance consumed to provide nutritional support for an organism. Food is usually of plant, animal or fungal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals. The substance is ingested by an organism and assimilated by the organism's cells to provide energy, maintain life, or stimulate growth. Different species of animals have different feeding behaviours that satisfy the needs of their unique metabolisms, often evolved to fill a specific ecological niche within specific geographical contexts.
Poultry are domesticated birds kept by humans for their eggs, their meat or their feathers. These birds are most typically members of the superorder Galloanserae (fowl), especially the order Galliformes. The term also includes birds that are killed for their meat, such as the young of pigeons but does not include similar wild birds hunted for sport or food and known as game. The word "poultry" comes from the French/Norman word poule, itself derived from the Latin word pullus, which means small animal.
Cysteine (symbol Cys or C; ) is a semiessential proteinogenic amino acid with the formula HOOC-CH-(NH2)-CH2-SH. The thiol side chain in cysteine often participates in enzymatic reactions, as a nucleophile. The thiol is susceptible to oxidation to give the disulfide derivative cystine, which serves an important structural role in many proteins. When used as a food additive, it has the E number E920. It is encoded by the codons UGU and UGC.
Islamic jurisprudence specifies which foods are halāl and which are harām. This is derived from commandments found in the Quran, the holy book of Islam, as well as the Hadith and Sunnah, libraries cataloging things the Islamic prophet Muhammad is reported to have said and done. Extensions of these rulings are issued, as fatwas, by mujtahids, with varying degrees of strictness, but they are not always widely held to be authoritative.
A dietary supplement is a manufactured product intended to supplement one's diet by taking a pill, capsule, tablet, powder or liquid. A supplement can provide nutrients either extracted from food sources or that are synthetic in order to increase the quantity of their consumption. The class of nutrient compounds includes vitamins, minerals, fiber, fatty acids and amino acids. Dietary supplements can also contain substances that have not been confirmed as being essential to life, but are marketed as having a beneficial biological effect, such as plant pigments or polyphenols. Animals can also be a source of supplement ingredients, such as collagen from chickens or fish for example. These are also sold individually and in combination, and may be combined with nutrient ingredients. In the United States and Canada, dietary supplements are considered a subset of foods, and are regulated accordingly. The European Commission has also established harmonized rules to help insure that food supplements are safe and properly labeled.
Halal is an Arabic word that translates to "permissible or lawful" into English.
Lecithin is a generic term to designate any group of yellow-brownish fatty substances occurring in animal and plant tissues which are amphiphilic – they attract both water and fatty substances, and are used for smoothing food textures, emulsifying, homogenizing liquid mixtures, and repelling sticking materials.
Rendering is a process that converts waste animal tissue into stable, usable materials. Rendering can refer to any processing of animal products into more useful materials, or, more narrowly, to the rendering of whole animal fatty tissue into purified fats like lard or tallow. Rendering can be carried out on an industrial, farm, or kitchen scale. It can also be applied to non-animal products that are rendered down to pulp.
In kashrut, the dietary laws of Judaism, pareve is a classification of edible substances that contain neither dairy nor meat ingredients. Food in this category includes all items that grow from the ground, fish, eggs, and non-biological edible items. Kashrut forbids consuming mixtures of milk and meat, consuming milk and meat at the same meal, consuming dairy foods within a period of time after consuming meat, and using the same dishes for both dairy and meat. Pareve foods, being neutral, can be consumed with either dairy or meat.
Chinese Indonesian cuisine is characterized by the mixture of Chinese with local Indonesian style. Chinese Indonesians, mostly descendant from Hokkien, brought their legacy of Chinese cuisine, and modified some of the dishes with the addition of Indonesian ingredients, such as kecap manis, palm sugar, peanut sauce, chili, santan and local spices to form a hybrid Chinese-Indonesian cuisine. Some of the dishes and cakes share the same style as in Malaysia and Singapore which are known as the Nonya cuisine by the Peranakan.
Natural food and all-natural food are terms in food labeling and marketing with several definitions, often implying foods that are not manufactured by processing. In some countries like the United Kingdom, the term "natural" is defined and regulated; in others, such as the United States, the term natural is not enforced for food labels, although there is USDA regulation of organic labeling.
Chicken Cottage Limited is a UK-based fast food chain. The company is the master franchisor and owner of the "Chicken Cottage" brand. Its taste is modelled on a blend of the Indian subcontinent and Southern United States flavours using halal ingredients. It currently operates through 115 outlets in the UK.
An animal product, also known as lacticinia, is any material derived from the body of an animal. Examples are fat, flesh, blood, milk, eggs, and lesser known products, such as isinglass and rennet.
The Non-GMO Project is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization focusing on genetically modified organisms. The organization began as an initiative of independent natural foods retailers in the U.S. and Canada, with the stated aim to label products produced in compliance with their Non-GMO Project Standard, which aims to prevent genetically modified foodstuffs from being present in retail food products. The organization is headquartered in Bellingham, Washington. The Non-GMO label began use in 2012 with Numi Organic Tea products.
Insects as food or edible insects are insect species used for human consumption, e.g., whole or as an ingredient in processed food products such as burger patties, pasta, or snacks.
This is a categorically-organized list of foods. Food is any substance consumed to provide nutritional support for the body. It is produced either by Plants or Animals, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals. The substance is ingested by an organism and assimilated by the organism's cells in an effort to produce energy, maintain life, or stimulate growth.
Chinese regional cuisines are the different cuisines found in different provinces and prefectures of China as well as from larger Chinese communities overseas.
Like the human practice of veganism, vegan dog foods are those formulated with the exclusion of ingredients that contain or were processed with any part of an animal, or any animal byproduct. Vegan dog food may incorporate the use of fruits, vegetables, cereals, legumes, nuts, vegetable oils, and soya, as well as any other non-animal based foods. The omnivorous domestic canine has evolved to metabolize carbohydrates and thrive on a diet lower in protein, and therefore, a vegan diet is nutritionally adequate for dogs if properly formulated and balanced. Dogs can also thrive on a vegetarian diet.
Halal meat is meat of animal slaughtered according to Quran and Sunnah and thus permitted for consumption by Muslims.
(As of 2020, the website is down.)
