Anyone wanna eat some wood pulp?

I have been noticing Cellulose in most of the pre-shredded cheeses that are in the supermarkets.  They list it as an ingredient to keep the cheese from sticking together.  I don't like the idea of eating something that is not actually cheese.  So I buy my cheese in a block and shred it myself. 
But it got me to wondering, what is cellulose, what foods is it in, why do they put it in there and how unhealthy is it or not.
Cellulose is a plant fiber.  The plant fiber they put in many processed food comes from wood and cotton.  You will find interesting reading about what it actually is and how it is used on about.com and Wikipedia. 
It is not digestible, it has no nutritional value.  Why do they put it in our food.  Well for one thing it is cheap and the food companies put it in there as a filler thereby making it cheaper to process and it makes them money by selling less for more.  According to Chef Shane Kelly They use it "because the cost of food is going up and food labs and manufacturers have got to figure out a way to make their food more filling with a great mouth feel, and also thickens and keeps food separated that is cheap."  Mary Bauer states on livestrong.com, "The food pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries use cellulose gum in a variety of products. Its emulsifying properties make it especially useful for products with ingredients that tend to separate, such as yogurt and jellies. Its ability to bind water makes it especially useful for diet foods, which tend to substitute water or other liquids for fat. Cellulose gum also improves texture, so it is a common ingredient in ice cream and frosting, products in which smoothness is a mark of quality. Beer manufacturers also use cellulose gum to stabilize beer foam. These same properties are useful for some pharmaceutical products that tend to separate over time, such as toothpaste. In the cosmetics industry, cellulose gum appears in bath products, makeup, shaving gels and hair products"

As far as it being good or bad for you, it is hard to tell, it is a "dietary fiber" and is used to add bulk and give you that full feeling with less nutrients.They take the wood pulp and treat it with various chemicals to strip away the cellulose. (Other forms of cellulose go through much more processing.)  That is not organic at all.  The FDA also cautions that the consumption of large quantities of cellulose gum may have a laxative effect. 

For those of us trying to avoid as much "processed" foods as possible, this is just crazy and way too processed.  Why don't we go eat some sawdust with our salad?  That would give us some nice fiber too wouldn't it?  In reality that is what we are doing, but it is processed sawdust, even yummier!

I think I will try to stick with foods that we are supposed to eat like fruit and vegetables that have the kind of cellulose we are suppose to eat.

It all goes back to my "conspiracy theory" that is in one of my earlier posts.  They sell crappy food, we eat it and get sick; we go to the doctor and the doctor pumps us full of drugs from the pharmaceutical companies that make us sick all the while continuing to eat the crappy processed foods that got us sick in the first place. On top of all that the Food and Drug Administration is at the head of this conspiracy.  Just follow the money, right out of your pocket...