Do Bakery Products Contain Human Hair?

An old article on Albalagh.net (it was new to me) describes how numerous bakery products contain an ingredient made out of human hair, and are therefore not allowed to be eaten by Muslims. The offending ingredient is the amino acid L-Cysteine, which can be made out of feathers, hooves... or yes, human hair. Back in January I linked to a story about soy sauce in China being made from human hair, so when I heard about bagels, croissants, pizza dough, etc. also containing human hair, I immediately suspected that this human-hair-in-food thing may be a bit of an urban legend. But as far as I can tell, there is some truth to it. The Shenzhen government has stated that it's looking into the soy sauce/human hair allegations. And L-cysteine can be made from human hair, as this Australian food additives guide notes. But I can't imagine human hair would provide the cheapest source of L-cysteine for commercial producers of it. Where would they be getting the hair from? Unless Supercuts is secretly supplying bulk shipments of it to the bakery industry (now there's a disgusting thought).

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