Citric Acid and Baking Soda - can you cook with the kind sold as cleaning products?

[lottiegarbanzo]

That's it really. Does anyone know?

You can buy quite large packs of these products sold for cleaning with, quite cheaply. Smaller pots sold for baking are more expensive.

The contents of the cleaning products are listed as 'main ingredient only'. So, if that's all it is, the pure ingredient, why not use it in cooking? But, the rules for production, purity and listing ingredients will be quite different for food products, than for cleaning products.

Does anyone know whether there is any real difference, so whether it's safe to cook with the cleaning product versions?

the rules for production, purity and listing ingredients will be quite different for food products, than for cleaning products

Exactly, so why would you want to eat it?

Because it could be that they're perfectly fine to eat.

In which case why pay lots more for the same thing packaged as a baking product?

Does anyone here have any knowledge on this subject?

I buy the big bags for cleaning from Amazon. I have just used some to get tea stains off a mug in fact!
Anyway, when you search for it on Amazon some says it is food grade and some doesn't so I guess the food grade stuff would be fine to cook with.

Oh that's interesting.

Ocado doesn't say, so I've emailed the manufacturer of the brand I have (Dri Pak).

In short OP, you do so at your own risk, it's not allowed to be called food safe:
www.dri-pak.co.uk/the-difference-between-baking-soda-and-bicarbonate-of-soda/

I had a box of Wilko bicarbonate of soda which I think was sold for cleaning purposes, and used it very successfully in baking during the period of lockdown when it was really hard to get basic ingredients. None of us are dead yet and the ingredients don't list anything else so I'm saying it's OK.

Aha, thank you!

'We are often asked whether our bicarbonate of soda can be used for baking. Our version is exactly the same product that is used in the (more expensive) pots that you find in the baking aisle, but it has not been packed on a 'food safe' line. That means that it's packed on a line that may also be packing citric acid or borax substitute, so we can't officially recommend it for culinary purposes. Many people use it to make elderflower cordial and other drinks.'

So it's not guaranteed safe - but many people do use it for culinary purposes.

Yes, that's what I wondered. Whether there's more leeway in listing one ingredient only for cleaning products (perhaps they only have to be 99% pure or something. Then the issue would be what the other 1% could be).

It sounds from Dri-pak as though an equivalent food product would have to say 'may contain x,y,z' or 'made in factory that also makes x,y,z' way. So not that those things will be in it but that it might have touched traces of them.

Yes - I checked first in case it contained perfumes or whatever it is they put in washing powder to make it too bitter to eat ( to discourage children from eating those capsules I think).