A soft madeleine as if prepared the same day, a curd that keeps for weeks without changing its taste, an ice cream that does not melt quickly even in the middle of summer. All this is possible due to the addition of emulsifiers during the industrial production process: these additives make these highly-processed foods more attractive and stabilize their taste and texture over time.
Except that consumption of certain emulsifiers is associated with a higher risk of developing cancer. That’s the conclusion of a French study published Tuesday, February 13, in Monthly Review PLOS Medicine, and conducted on more than 90,000 people who were part of the NutriNet-Santé cohort, whose health and lifestyle and consumption habits were analyzed over nearly seven years.
Conducted on this monitoring Such a large cohort made it possible to individually isolate the additives consumed and in what amounts based on the products purchased by the participants. Other risk factors, such as alcohol or tobacco, may also be considered to compensate for potential bias.
Sweets, pastries or ice cream
Among the sixty emulsifiers studied, several were identified as problematic. For example, researchers have found that high intake of E471 – mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids – increases the risk of cancer by 15%, especially breast (24%) and prostate (46%). Certain additives or groups of additives (E407 and E407a, E450, E440 and E500) have been associated with an increased risk of breast cancer – especially for the latter three in premenopausal women. Other associations were also observed, but they were not strong enough to pass all the statistical tests conducted by the scientists.
This emulsifier is found in many industrial products – eight out of ten participants, for example, consume products containing E471 on a daily basis. It can also be found especially in sweets, pastries or ice cream “Foods that don’t need to be labeled “junk food”., underlines nutritionist and research director at Inserm Mathilde Tovier, who conducted the study with her team. We can cite as an example “Cereal rusk or margarine enriched with omega 3, which is mainly consumed by people who want to take care of their cardiovascular health”she explains.
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