What is Guar Gum?
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Guar gum can best be described as a natural food thickener, similar to locust bean gum, cornstarch or tapioca flour. Guar gum is said to have significantly more thickening ability than cornstarch, at a fraction of the cost. This has made guar gum a popular additive in products such as puddings and ice creams. Until recently, guar gum was also an ingredient in non-prescription diet pills designed to create a sense of fullness. The dietary supplement Benefiber is almost 100 percent guar gum.
The guar plant, also known as a cluster plant, grows primarily in Pakistan and the northern regions of India. It thrives on the drought/monsoon cycles present in those areas. The plants are harvested after the monsoon season and the seeds are allowed to dry in the sun. The seeds are then manually or mechanically separated and processed into a flour or sold as split seeds. Guar gum is an important cash crop for the Indian and Pakistani economies.
While consumers may balk at such 'exotic' ingredients as locust bean gum, carageenan and guar gum, the truth is many of our ice creams, puddings and canned sauces would be fairly inedible without them. Guar gum is not just a thickening agent, but a binder and plasticizer as well. When untreated ice cream melts and refreezes, grainy ice crystals often form. Guar gum has the natural ability to bind with water molecules, preventing them from forming the unwanted crystals. Processed foods with creamy textures are primarily held together with binders such as guar gum. Without a binder, the individual ingredients might separate into a watery mess.
The use of guar gum as an ingredient in non-prescription diet aids was officially banned in the early 1990s by the FDA. The guar gum would bind with liquids in the stomach and swell, causing a feeling of satisfying fullness. However, this mass of swollen guar gum would also cause dangerous intestinal and duodenal blockages. Guar gum was declared unsafe and ineffective for use as a non-prescription diet aid, although it is still used in small amounts as a food thickener and binder.
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Discuss this Article
Can people who are fructose intolerant use this without any worries?
- anon31207
How much guar gum would one use to bind an 8 oz jar of oil and nut based mayonnaise?
- kanitbeu
Guar gum is used as a clumping agent in cat litter... see Feline Pine Flakes... yum!
- anon26953
I am on a gluten free diet. Is "guar gum" OK?
- caswell
I bought evercleanse. It is just Guar Gum. I bought $110.00 worth of Benefiber. Stupid me
- anon21610
I was just diagnosed as allergic to soybeans, peas, and peanuts (all legumes), and during my research online (at about.com, to be precise) it says to avoid guar gum... is it because its in the same family?
- KeeliLuv
response to anon1146:
Yes--guar gum is used to make the Foods By George English Muffins that I absolutely LOVE. They are gluten-free. - kcf549
For those who want to cook gluten-free, I suggest trying ground chia seeds (has properties a bit like flax seeds, but better, in my opinion) or arrowroot powder. These will give consistence and btw chia is ultra-nutritious and isn't processed at all!
- anon16456
I'm counting calories and want to lower the calories in pudding by using Guar Gum. I made a batch using 1 teaspoon guar gum to 2.5 cups milk. The pudding tasted great but was gluey and wouldn't set. Any suggestions or recipes for it? Do I need to mix it with corn starch?
- Bugsy63
Emulsifiers like guar gum have made possible the shipment and storage of commercial ice cream. The term "creaminess" has nothing to do with cream but rather is a marketing term to convince consumers that we want the consistency of this product which is most efficiently mass-produced for shipment. The delectable icy crunch of hand-cranked and some commercially produced ice creams could be more desirable if economics warranted their marketing as such. "Creaminess" is a by-product of manufacturing a stable shippable product. Most consumers want it because marketing has done its job well.
- anon10384
I'm allergic to xanthan gum. I suspect because of its relation to mold. Is guar gum a reasonable substitute in gluten-free baking?
- anon8217
I'm sold on gum guar for making ice creams and thickening Indian chai (like Starbucks uses it to thicken their frappuccinos), but do you have a rule of thumb for how much to use? I've discovered that a very little goes a long long way.
- anon6538
Guar Gum contains some protein residue (4 to 6 %), is there any method available to eliminate all residue?
- balakrishnan
Is Guar Gum used as a substitute for Gluten in bread products for people who are Coeliac and require gluten free food?
- anon1146
"The dietary supplement Benefiber is almost 100 percent guar gum." is no longer true. Benefiber recently changed it formula to "wheat dextrin".
- anon133
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Written by
Michael Pollick
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