Everything is made of chemicals, even an all-natural sun-ripened banana. Does a banana naturally include a chemical used by big pharma and a chemical that can cause your blood to stop clotting?! Image via James Kennedy. CLICK TO ENLARGE
The Food Babe once said that if your food contains an ingredient your third grader can’t pronounce you shouldn’t eat it. I say that in that case no one would ever eat an organic banana, which contains the naturally occurring, yet difficult to pronounce phylloquine, tocopherol and palmitoleic acid. These chemicals are tongue twisters for sure but naturally occurring, harmless and good for you chemicals that nature put in your sun-ripened banana.
We all share concern about the safety of food and food additives. Scary-sounding chemical names create suspicion and fear, and with our endless exposure to information everyone seems to be an expert in deciphering just how dangerous chemicals really are. In fact, a thriving industry that capitalizes on fear of chemicals has cropped up, and of course they profit from selling supplements and organic food that are supposed to be chemical free (spoiler alert, everything is made up of chemicals). We call this scare tactic chemophobia.
Often, this chemophobic industry focuses on food additives – chemicals that impart important properties to food nutrition, stability, or quality – as chemicals to be afraid of. As a professor of horticultural sciences I can tell you food additives are chosen because they are safe for human consumption in the quantities used.
The Food Babe, a member of the chemophobia industry has put a common additive in her crosshairs: butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), found in everything from cereals to gum to food packaging itself. BHT has an outstanding safety record—yet has become the target of recent commentary by scientifically dubious sources.
It may sound strange to eat a chemical that’s also used in food packaging, but what if I told you that one of those chemicals in the all-natural sun-ripened banana has been shown to increase a non-smoker’s risk of lung cancer by 7%?
The Food Babe says that if your third grader can’t pronounce an ingredient, you shouldn’t eat it. Unfortunately, that means we wouldn’t be able to eat fresh fruits and vegetables, that are composed of tongue-twisting, naturally-occurring chemicals.
That chemical is tocopherol and it doesn’t make your banana a dangerous carcinogen. It just means that in large doses the small amount of tocopherol in your banana can do more harm than good, but at lower levels, it’s perfectly healthy.
BHT is simply a synthetic antioxidant. It does the same job that all antioxidants do- it delays changes in food quality that occur from exposure to oxygen and other reactive molecules. It is typically found as a stabilizing agent in food, but also is important in the manufacturing of cosmetics, and even has a role in rubber production. It is most commonly encountered in food containing fats, as it is highly effective in deterring rancidity.
I can understand those that are afraid of BHT. There is a lot of research that shows the relative toxicity of BHT and when those studies are viewed in isolation they can seem reasonably alarming.
Some studies show that BHT can be toxic when consumed in large quantities used lab mice, with some examination of how the compound is metabolized in humans. Rats and humans were fed relatively high levels to determine its biological fate—and found that while it is possible to accumulate BHT in fat tissue if high levels are consumed for days. To reach these toxic levels you’d need to eat almost two tons of cereal in one day. Even at these high levels, BHT is rapidly eliminated as normal consumption continues. About half is gone after a day.
Certainly it is easy to read the reports on risk assessment and toxicity and become worried about possible effects, as they seem so plausible. However, careful analysis reveals that biological effects are not observed at the levels actually consumed in the typical diet. In tomorrow’s post, I will break down the studies and science behind BHT, and dispel some of the biggest myths surrounding this chemical compound. – Edited by Leslie Waghorn.
Kevin M. Folta is a Professor and the Chairman of the Horticultural Sciences Department at the University of Florida. His laboratory examines how light signals are sensed in plants and how different parts of the spectrum can change shelf life and high-value fruit and vegetable traits. His group also uses novel genomics approaches to identify genes related to flavor and disease resistance. He has been recognized with several awards, including the NSF CAREER Award, the University of Florida Research Professorship, and the HHMI Distinguished Mentor Award. A key part of his program is communicating science to non-scientific audiences, and training scientists how to perform public outreach in scientific or controversial topics. BS/MS Northern Illinois University 1989/1992, Ph.D. University of Illinois at Chicago, 1998.
Resources:
Wikipedia. Chemophobia Entry. Retrieved May 17, 2015.
Deborah Kotz. Worried too much about chemicals? You may have chemophobia. The Boston Globe. August 20, 2013. Retrieved May 17, 2015.
EFSA Panel on Food Additives and Nutrient Sources added to Food (ANS). Scientific Opinion on the re-evaluation of butylated hydroxytoluene BHT (E 321) as a food additive. European Food Safety Commission. EFSA Journal 2012;10(3):2588. Retrieved May 17, 2015.
Wu, QJ. Xiang, YB. Yang, G. et al. Vitamin E intake and the lung cancer risk among female nonsmokers: a report from the Shanghai Women’s Health Study. International Journal of Cancer.2015 Feb 1;136(3):610-7. doi: 10.1002/ijc.29016 Retrieved May 17, 2015.
Melody M. Bromgardner. General Mills to Remove BHT From Its Cereals. Chemical and Engineering News. February 23, 2015. Retrieved May 17, 2015.
National Toxicology Program. Bioassay of Butylated Hydroxytoluene (BHT) for Possible Carcinogenicity (CAS No. 128-37-0). U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Report date, 1979. Retrieved May 17, 2015.
Sadri Hassani. Warning: Do Not Eat 1.7 Tons of Cereal A Day! The Skeptical Educator Blog. March 3, 2015. Retrieved May 17, 2015.