Researchers found that consumption of common food preservatives may be associated with a higher risk of high blood pressure or even cardiovascular disease, according to a study published last week.
The study was led by researchers from the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research, the Nutritional Epidemiology Research Team at the Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, and the Université Paris Cité, France. It was published in the European Heart Journal on May 20.
Their study evaluated 112,395 volunteers across France, producing what they described as a detailed analysis of the diets and food ingredients people consumed, according to a statement from the European Society of Cardiology, which publishes the European Heart Journal.
As part of the study, volunteers reported what they ate or drank over a three-day period every six months. They found that 99.5 percent of volunteers had consumed at least one preservative during the first two years of participating in the study.
“Researchers carried out detailed analyses of the ingredients of all the food and drink, including any preservatives,” the statement said.
“They also tracked the volunteers’ health for an average of seven to eight years to see if they developed high blood pressure or any cardiovascular disease.”
Eight of 17 commonly consumed food preservatives were associated with high blood pressure, according to the researchers: potassium sorbate, sodium nitrite, ascorbic acid, citric acid, rosemary acid, potassium metabisulfite, sodium ascorbate, and sodium erythorbate.
Ascorbic acid, the researchers found, was specifically linked to cardiovascular disease, which includes heart attack, stroke, and angina.
Those at highest risk were those who consumed the most preservatives, the researchers said.
Overall, the researchers found that study volunteers who consumed the highest amounts of “non-antioxidant” preservatives had a 29 percent higher risk of developing high blood pressure (hypertension) than those who consumed the least. The people who ate the most preservatives also had a 16 percent higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease.
People who consumed the most antioxidant preservatives experienced a 22 percent higher risk of having high blood pressure, they found.
The researchers noted that antioxidant preservatives are meant to prevent oxidation, which prevents food from becoming rancid or brown, while non-antioxidant preservatives are designed to prevent mold and bacteria from forming.
The authors of the study noted that it was observational and that a causal link between the preservatives and high blood pressure was not established. They called for more research into their findings.
While there were “multiple associations between exposure to preservative food additives widely used in industrial foods” and a “higher incidence of hypertension” observed in the paper, the researchers said that “experimental research” should be performed to find out why.
“If confirmed, these new data call for the re-evaluation of regulations governing the use of these additives to improve consumer protection,” they concluded in an abstract of the study.
Anaïs Hasenböhler, one of the researchers who led the study with the Nutritional Epidemiology Research Team, said in a statement, “As far as we know, this is the first study of its kind to investigate the links between a wide range of preservatives and cardiovascular health.”