Eating combinations of common food additives may be tied to a slightly increased risk of Type 2 diabetes, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal PLOS Medicine.
A growing body of evidence has linked certain food additives to cancer, diabetes, heart disease and changes to the gut microbiome. Many of these studies, however, were focused on single ingredients. "In real life, we ingest a mixture of additives," said Mathilde Touvier, director of the nutritional epidemiology research team at Université Sorbonne Paris Nord and the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, who co-authored the new study. Touvier and her team looked at about eight years of data from more than 108,000 adults from the French NutriNet-Santé cohort, a long-running study that looks at the links between food and health. Poring over the participants' reported diets, the researchers identified five mixtures of additives people commonly consumed together. The combinations don't look unlike an ingredient list you might find on the label of an ultra-processed food. Mixture 1: Sodium carbonates; diphosphates; glycerol; ammonium carbonates; potassium carbonates; sorbitol Mixture 2: Modified starches; pectins; guar gum; carrageenan; polyphosphates; potassium sorbate; curcumin; xanthan gum Mixture 3: Magnesium carbonates; riboflavin; alpha-tocopherol; ammonium carbonates Mixture 4: Ammonium carbonates; sodium carbonates; diphosphates; alpha-tocopherol; DATEM; magnesium carbonates; lecithins Mixture 5: Citric acid; sodium citrates; phosphoric acid; sulphite ammonia caramel; acesulfame K; aspartame; sucralose; arabic gum; malic acid; carnauba wax; paprika extract, capsanthin, and capsorubin; anthocyanins; guar gum; pectins "It's relatively uncommon for all of them to appear in a single product, however, it's entirely possible to consume all of them across different foods throughout the day, especially when eating a variety of processed or ultra-processed foods," said Mengxi Du, a research associate at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who studies nutrition and health and wasn't involved with the…