Emulsifiers: nothing to worry about?

Should we be avoiding them? Or is this just another scare story?

Emulsifiers are a range of dozens of chemicals, up to 100 of them, used in food processing to bind substances together to make them more solid, stop them falling apart and give artificial UPFs a better mouthfeel. A recent paper published in the BMJ on the topic of emulsifiers and heart disease caught my eye and I wanted to expand on it.

Emulsifiers are present in the vast majority of UPF, making them almost synonymous with these artificial edible food like substances. The dogma has been that these are harmless, they’ve been tested and they don’t require any restriction or review. The published study by a team of French researchers, known as the Nutrinet Sante study, studied the  people who ate emulsifiers within specific foods over 7 years and how they could cause harm. The study used a detailed questionnaire and had a strong methodology and was published in a respected journal.

I read the paper and thought it was a convincing epidemiological study when considered with the rest of the evidence, and commented on this on social media. I believe we should be issuing warnings on these types of foods and their impact on health. As usual, I had a fair amount of backlash on social media, a lot of it from Nutrition researchers and some from scientists who have received funds themselves or worked in labs funded by the food industry.

Photo by dole777