Colors, sweeteners, emulsifiers … Taken in isolation, food additives are already worrying. But what happens when they find themselves mixed on our plates?
Largely present in ultra-transformed foods, additives are often mixed with each other in industrialist recipes in order to combine their properties: preservatives, taste enhancers, colors, aromas, texture agents …
To assess the toxicity of these additives, scientists often analyze them one by one. Thus, in 2024, a French study showed that emulsifiers can increase the risk of type 2 diabetes (1).
Zoom on emulsifiers
Frequently used by the food industry, emulsifiers are used to improve the texture of products while extending their shelf life. They are present in cakes, desserts, yogurts, ice creams, chocolate bars, industrial breads, rusks, margarines, prepared dishes … They include mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids, carraghenians, modified starchs, lecithins, phosphates, celluloses, gums and pectins.
However, these additives are often consumed in a group, and not alone, as explained to CNN Mathilde Touvier, research director at Inserm (2): “A soda light contains a mixture of artificial sweeteners, dyes and acidifiers such as aspartame, potassium aceulfame (ACE-K), ammonium sulfite caramel and citric acid. Same thing for flavored dietetic yogurt – with artificial emulsifiers and sweeteners – or industrial bread with emulsifiers, conservatives, etc. »» What’s more, you can eat different ultra-transformed foods together, for example an industrial hamburger with soda and dessert cream!
So these cocktails of additives have even more harmful effects, superior to the sum of each additives?
Read: autoimmune diseases, cancer, obesity: the new dangers of additives (subscribers)
Cocktails of worrying additives
To find out if certain groups of additives affect the risk of type 2 diabetes when combined, Mathilde Touvier’s team analyzed the data of 108,643 adults from the Nutrine-Santé cohort over an average monitoring period of 7.7 years (3).
Participants were asked about their food consumption. Using the Open Food Facts database, which provides the list of ingredients of more than 3 million foods, the researchers have drawn up the list of additives consumed by each person. Nutritional data was then compared to medical records to see who developed type 2 diabetes.
Of the five groups of identified additives, two were associated with a modest increase in the risk of diabetes. The first criminal mixture included emulsifiers (modified starchs, pectin, guar gum, carraghénanes, polyphosphates, xanthan gum), a preservative (potassium sorbate) and a dye (curcumin), which are found in broths, milky desserts, materials and sauces (4). The second problematic mixture was made up of additives present in sweetened drinks and sodas: acidifying, acidity regulators (citric acid, sodium citrates, phosphoric acid, malic acid), colors (caramel with ammonium sulfite, anthocyans, paprika extract), edulcoators aspartame, supralose), emulsifiers (gum arabic, pectin, guar gum) and coating agent (Carnau wax).
Consequently, these Esults suggest that certain mixtures are associated with a higher risk of diabetes, which raises the question of current methods for assessing additives, which do not take into account combined effects. “Other studies are necessary in order to elucidate underlying mechanisms and deepen the understanding of the synergies and potential antagonisms between these food additives, Add Mathilde Touvier. However, our results are in line with experimental work in vitro Recent suggesting possible cocktail effects (5). »»
