Spices and Natural Vegetarian Flavors
Just because you gave up the meat doesn’t mean you have to give up the flavor!
To say we are passionate about our vegetarian meat alternatives doesn’t even begin to tell the story. We devote a large amount of R&D energy into developing deliciously flavored veggie foods while maintaining our high standards when choosing which spices and flavors to use.
Many of our products contain spice blends, which are proprietary recipes of herbs, spices and natural vegetarian flavors. If you have a specific food allergy or an ingredient question please contact us with your questions and we will provide the needed information. We are dedicated to complete ingredient transparency and will answer your question promptly.
We do use “natural vegetarian flavors” in some of our products. Our products contain no added MSG or protein hydrolysates, however autolysed yeast extract is an ingredient in some of our products and soy sauce is an ingredient in most of them. Turtle Island Foods considers autolysed yeast extract to be a healthy, natural ingredient, as opposed to MSG, which is a chemically purified ingredient. In comparing the two, autolysed yeast typically has 5-10% free glutamate acid whereas MSG is 80-100% free glutamate acid.
Autolysed yeast is produced using a simple process –salt is added to yeast and then incubated. The salt causes the yeast cells to rupture and release their enzymes. These enzymes break down some of the yeast proteins and release amino acids, producing an “umami” flavor. Umami is a Japanese word meaning savory, a deliciousness factor deriving specifically from detection of the natural amino acid, glutamic acid, or glutamates common in meats, cheese, broth stock, and other protein-heavy foods.
We have tested our Tofurky products for glutamate levels. These tests indicate that the levels of free glutamate in our Tofurky sausages are similar to the levels that naturally occur in beef, chicken or fish and the levels in our Tofurky deli slices are similar to those in potatoes or corn.
IIf you wish to avoid autolysed yeast as an ingredient in our products we recommend our tempeh products, which do not contain autolysed yeast.
Did you know?
Our products contain no added MSG or protein hydrolysates.