I've seen a meme shared on social media multiple times this week, asserting that our foods contain paint thinners in the form of Trisodium Phosphate (TSP). The image below was shared on a FaceBook page called "Organic Health" with the caption "It's right in our faces... Just mocking us. Can you believe there is paint thinner in cereal?" :
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| from Organic Health, link here
The meme links to an article over at naturalcuresnotmedicine (here). The article contains very little scientific material and quite obviously is written to scare people out of buying foods with TSP, not present an objective viewpoint on it. The article states that TSP is something that developers and construction workers should be familiar with, not people buying food (a pretty pointless comparison). The authors of the natural cures article go so far to even say that inorganic phosphate can be detrimental to our health: there is no citation for this claim, which is a rather ludicrous one seeing as almost all of the phosphorus in the body's extracellular fluids is in an inorganic form. Organic phosphorus simply refers to when phosphate is found in a complex with carbon-containing materials, like phytic acid in plants or nucleic acids in our body, rather than in an ionic state (1,2).
Note that this issue of TSP in our food is a pretty widespread target for pseudoscience-activists. A youtube video from health conspiracy covered it here. Seattle Organic Restaurants misrepresent the TSP story here. Activistpost covered it here. And the Natural Society here. The list could go on, but it seems like there is widespread fear being spread about this ingredient.
Let's clarify what TSP is and why there is 'paint thinner' in our food:
So what is Trisodium Phosphate?: Trisodium phosphate is simply a sodium salt of phosphoric acid. It contains 3 sodiums, and a phosphoric acid ( an antioxidant and flavoring agent commonly added to food that does not provide unique safety concerns apart from total phosphorus intake (3)). It adds the essential minerals sodium and phosphorus to the diet (things most Americans are not deficient in). The chemical structure looks like this:
What is its role in Food?: It is widely used as an emulsifier and stabilizer in food (4). It can also be added as an antimicrobial agent (5).
Is it toxic?: Yes, virtually everything is toxic at a specific dose
What dose is toxic? Its LD50 is set at 7400 mg/kg body weight for oral consumption by rats. It is not listed a being a chronic health hazard. (12)
Is it safe? Yes. The joint FAO/WHO (Food and Agriculture Organization, World Health Organization) statement on trisodium phosphate as a food additive set the maximum tolerable daily intake (MTDI) at 70mg/kg of bw (6) - this was a grouped MTDI for all phosphorus containing additives, not just trisodium phosphate. This is because their is no unique health concern related to TSP. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given TSP the Generally Recognized as Safe designation (7). The EU has also approved sodium phosphates, including trisodium phosphate, for use as a food additive (8).
The concern raised by Organic Health and the other sites I mentioned are due to the conflation of TSP's role as a food additive with its role in industrial uses. Check out the differences between a technical grade TSP safety (MSDS) sheet and a food grade one: here and here. There is a huge difference between concerns over the few milligrams consumed in food and the large doses that may be accidentally consumed/inhaled in industrial uses. The concerns raised by naturalcuresnotmedicine are analogous to someone saying don't add a few milligrams of sodium on your food because consuming several cups of it could kill you. Context matters.
Is it a paint thinner? Paint thinner is just a general term used for a solvent used to thin paints and allow for easy clean up or removal. Paint thinners are commonly thought of as toxic or deadly because they contain large doses of strong solvents like acetone or mineral spirits, that, if ingested, can be deadly. TSP can be used a heavy duty cleaner, with a number of applications including wall cleaning, but it is not a paint thinner in the sense that one thinks about paint thinner as being made of acetone (note: even acetone can be made in the body; the fear over it is dose-dependent, like every other chemical). The TSP used in the picture above, when compared to Lucky Charms, is made by Savogran and can be found here. Note that all of their applications require 1/4 cup to 1 cup of TSP dissolved in water, not the few milligrams found in foods. Anyone who compares TSP to paint thinner has a severe misunderstanding of chemistry and is selling their paradigm with fear, not science or evidence.
Other points: Sodium phosphates, including TSP, have caused some to be concerned because they add to our total intake of phosphorus (the reason that the WHO set the MTDI for phosphate additives, not just TSP). Phosphorus containing additives may contribute substantially to total phosphorus intake, depending on the individuals diet, and make it difficult for sub-populations, like kidney disease patients, to limit phosphate intake (9). The naturalcuresnotmedicine article lists concerns over TSP (again, they conflate the concerns over industrial uses and the small amounts in food), citing reduction of bone density. Some have expressed concern that those consuming high phosphorus diets that are low in calcium may impair calcium homeostasis and negatively impact bone density via a FGF23 dependent mechanism (10,11). If you're concerned about extra phosphorus from food additives, you can limit your consumption of them - they are often found in foods that are minimally nutritious, and shouldn't make up a bulk of your diet to begin with. Note that additives should not be the only thing on your radar then, as animal foods are also high in bioavailable phosphorus. Sodium phosphate solutions have also been used prior to colonscopies to cleanse the colon, and have caused some concern due to acute renal failure in a small percentage of users - see here and here.
These kind of comparisons ('X' is in my food but is also in 'Y' non-food substance) do nothing to address safety concerns over foods or food additives. I could make you a thousand memes showing that formaldehyde is used in everything from wood finishing to paint, but that wouldn't make you not eat pears because they contain a small amount of formaldehyde, would it?
1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK310/
2. http://www.mayomedicallaboratories.com/test-catalog/Clinical+and+Interpretive/8408
3. http://www.inchem.org/documents/jecfa/jecmono/v38aje10.htm
4. http://www.foodchemadditives.com/products/trisodium-phosphate
5. http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/scdocs/doc/297.pdf
6. http://www.inchem.org/documents/jecfa/jeceval/jec_2348.htm
7. http://www.fda.gov/food/ingredientspackaginglabeling/foodadditivesingredients/ucm091048.htm
8. http://www.food.gov.uk/science/additives/enumberlist#toc-5
9. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12753675
10. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7747666
11. http://advances.nutrition.org/content/5/1/92.abstract
12. http://www.hillbrothers.com/msds/pdf/n/trisodium-phosphate-crystalline.pdf |
You don't answer the underlying concern that makes the pseudoscience arguments about food chemicals appeal to so many. You answer the question about what TSP does, but not why is TSP in our food. Grandma never needed to add TSP to her recipes. TSP is in our food because the food is processed on an industrial scale, and at that scale the methods home cooks recognize and understand don't apply.
ReplyDeleteWhy is our food processed on industrial scales? Why is that safe? Those are the questions that needs to be answered.
Your concerns seem to be outside the scope of this article and my expertise on food and nutrition. If concern is with large-scale production, why not state that. If those arguments are legitimate, why spread fear about the ingredient?
DeleteAs I stated, it's in our food for multiple reasons, where it serves a number of purposes. It's used in meat production to prevent microbial growth. Food-borne illness and contamination were definitely something grandmom had to worry about. We live in a time now where we're really lucky to have much safer food due to the addition of antimicrobials.
Also note that this kind of cherrypicking of ingredients and fear-mongering is exactly how anti-vaxxers pushed people into think that vaccines were toxic and the cause of a number of diseases. That's why I find these clarifications important.
DeleteMy intent was to suggest that efforts such as yours are fine, but insufficient to overcome people's doubts, because they don't address the underlying concerns. In this respect I agree with Marion Nestle. Most people fear the loss of control of what's in their food, which is a consequence of industrial scale processing.
DeleteI think that if they were more comfortable with the processing, they'd be less likely to buy the arguments of the fearmongers. Perhaps that's naive.
I didn't mean to imply that the clarifications were not important. And I agree that it's cherry picking and has similarities to what anti-vaxxers do.
Why don't they just argue against the industrialization of food? Often times they do. But for most people, the convenience and low cost overcomes any misgivings, so just railing against the factory processing isn't enough.
I appreciate both the series and your answers.
I think the point of Kevin's post WAS to make people 'more comfortable with the processing'. He's taking one ingredient at a time and laying out the facts. if the fear surrounding the loss of control of what's in their food is from ignorance of those additives, then here we have someone trying to subdue that fear and stamp out that ignorance. He is avoiding the very railing against the system that 'isn't enough' and would only make things worse.
ReplyDeleteJenny Ruhl at Diabetes Update had a posting a while back about phosphate additives, and brought up some studies that pointed to inorganic phosphates as being bad for the cardiovascular system, even in people who do not have kidney disease.
ReplyDeletehttp://diabetesupdate.blogspot.com/2013/06/phosphate-additives-promote-hardening.html