Sugar Replacer: Isomalt, are they Halal?

Bone char (Latin: carbo animals) is a porous, black, granular material produced by charring animal bones. Its composition varies depending on how it is made; however, it consists mainly of tricalcium phosphate (or hydroxylapatite) 57–80%, calcium carbonate 6–10% and carbon 7–10%.¹

The use of charcoal based on bones for sugar production has been a long-standing tradition in Europe for decades. Isomalt, on the contrary, is produced from sugar in two steps: Rearrangement reaction using enzymes and hydrogenation. Sugar is commonly derived from a plant such as a beetroot. Nonetheless, do not accept products such as sugar, where activated carbon (bone char) of animal origin has been used. It is mandatory that the origin of bones shall be “Halal slaughtered animals”, a condition that mainly cannot be fulfilled e.g. in Europe and North America.

Activating carbon is also known as an application for water filters, which is another subject that we should be aware of.

• On a limited scale, animal manures are also used for the production of activated carbon. The use of activated carbon is common to remove metals from wastewater, but its use for metal immobilization is not common in contaminated soils (Gerçel and Gerçel, 2007; Lima and Marshall, 2005b). Poultry manure-derived activated carbon had excellent metal binding capacity (Lima and Marshall, 2005a). Activated carbon is often used to remediate pollutants in soil and water due to its porous structure, large surface area, and high adsorption capacity (Üçer et al., 2006).²
• Activated carbon is among the best-known and most frequently applied adsorbent materials and can be produced from animal and plant carbonaceous materials, such as bones, coals, petroleum coke, nutshells, peat, wood, and lignite.³

¹ Wikipedia | ¹·¹ Dr Rachid, Halal Control | ² Muhammad Sabir, … Saifullah, in Soil Remediation and Plants, 2015 | ³Dietmar Rolf Kammerer, … Reinhold Carle, in Polyphenols in Plants, 2014