“Don’t buy grated cheese, it’s full of sawdust.” That one popped up again this week in one of the keto groups I’m in. I was tempted to reply that sawdust in cheese is where the dietary fibre comes from. I held back, mostly. I thought this had been put to bed years ago, but myths are like leftovers, or the coffee you reheated twice: they come back around.
Cheese is one of the workhorses of keto and low carb cooking. It’s an easy source of fat and protein, and it can stand in for the texture of things that would otherwise be high carb.
Is there really sawdust in cheese?
Take fat head dough. It uses 170 g of grated mozzarella, roughly a third of a normal block. The percentage of dietary fibre in that is…
Yeah, ok, I’ll stop.
To be clear: sawdust in cheese is a myth. Nobody is sweeping up a timber mill and tipping it into your shredded cheese. What is in there is an anti-caking agent, which stops the shreds clumping into one sad cheese brick. On an Australian label you’ll usually see it as “anti-caking agent (460)”, or just “cellulose”.
What is cellulose (E460)?
Cellulose is the main building material in plant cell walls. It’s in every fruit and vegetable you eat. For food use it’s purified from plant pulp. In the microcrystalline version it’s partly broken down with acid, which gives you a fine, white, flavourless powder. That’s why it works as an anti-caking agent, and also as a texturiser in plenty of other foods.
Trees contain cellulose too, so sawdust does contain cellulose. I suspect that’s where some creative interpretation crept in, probably helped along by a click-hungry headline. Does that mean there’s actual sawdust in your grated cheese? Yeah, nah.
Is it harmful?
Let me get this off my chest first. Are additives in food a good thing? Rarely, in my opinion. Some people find particular additives just don’t sit well with them, and that’s worth taking seriously.
Here’s what I found on this one. In 2018 the European Food Safety Authority re-evaluated the celluloses, E460 included, and found no safety concern at the levels used, and no need for a set daily limit. Cellulose isn’t absorbed. Some of it can be fermented by gut bacteria on the way through. If you’re someone who bloats easily, that’s the bit I’d keep an eye on. That’s my reading, not something the review says.
When I first poked around, the toxicology all seemed to trace back to studies from the 1990s. The newer review reaches the same place. For me, E460 isn’t on my list of things to worry about. I do think what we put into bodies already under stress adds up, but that’s a general instinct, not a finding about this additive.
What about the starch?
Starches are the other common anti-caking agent. Sometimes they’re named (potato starch), sometimes the label just says “starch”. Again, probably not a battle worth fighting unless you have an allergy or intolerance. Starch also adds carbs, so check the nutrition panel. Keto vs low carb explains why that matters.
Block or bag?
Would you be better off grating a block yourself? That depends on the block, because blocks have their own additives. And even with the fancy attachments for the Kenwood, KitchenAid, Thermomix or <insert kitchen gadget here>, it feels like a lot of spoons for not much return.
For me, pre-grated wins on spoons. If grating a block is easy today, lovely. If it isn’t, a bag of grated cheese is a perfectly good ingredient.
A 10-second label check works for any bag:
- Ingredients: cheese plus an anti-caking agent (460, cellulose or starch) is the usual story.
- Carbs per 100 g: starch-coated shreds can run higher.
- Your own sensitivities: if you react to a particular starch, the label will say which one.
Sawdust: no. Cellulose: yes, and it’s fine for me. Check the label if you have a starch or fibre sensitivity. Otherwise, the bag in the fridge door can stay.
