Common food preservatives found extensively across the modern processed food supply may be associated with a greater risk of developing high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, according to new research published in the European Heart Journal.
The comprehensive study was led by Dr. Mathilde Touvier, a research director at INSERM, the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research, alongside Anaïs Hasenböhler, a PhD student. Both researchers operate within the Nutritional Epidemiology Research Team at the Université Sorbonne Paris Nord and Université Paris Cité in France. Their work shines a new light on the potential long-term health consequences of ingredients that are consumed daily by millions of people around the world.
Preservatives are routinely added to a vast array of consumer foods for several distinct reasons, including preventing the growth of harmful bacteria and mold, slowing the natural process of spoilage, and helping manufactured products maintain their visual color, appealing flavor, or overall freshness for extended periods. Because these chemical ingredients have become deeply embedded in the global food supply, researchers wanted to better understand whether chronic, long-term exposure could be safely connected to human cardiovascular health over time.
Ms. Hasenböhler noted the ubiquity of these substances in the modern diet, stating that food preservatives are utilized in hundreds of thousands of industrially processed foods. She explained that while previous experimental studies had suggested that certain preservative food additives might be harmful to cardiovascular health in laboratory settings, public health experts had not previously possessed enough robust epidemiological evidence regarding the actual impact of these specific ingredients in humans. To the knowledge of the research team, this investigation represents the first large-scale study of its kind to systematically investigate the links between a remarkably wide range of preservatives and long-term cardiovascular health outcomes.
Tracking Diet and Heart Health in More Than 112,000 People
The groundbreaking research was conducted as part of the NutriNet-Santé project, a large and ongoing public health research initiative that examines the complex connections between human nutrition, dietary patterns, and long-term health outcomes. The meticulous analysis ultimately included 112,395 adult volunteers living across France, providing a large and demographically diverse sample size for the epidemiological evaluation.
Every six months throughout the course of the monitoring period, participants were required to record everything they ate and drank during a rigorous three-day period. This method gave researchers unusually detailed information about their actual dietary habits, rather than relying exclusively on broad, generalized estimates of overall food consumption that are common in many nutritional studies.
The research team then systematically examined the precise chemical ingredients contained within those logged foods and beverages, paying close attention to the specific preservatives they contained. Participants were followed for an average of seven to eight years so researchers could accurately track whether they developed medical conditions such as high blood pressure, or major cardiovascular diseases including heart attacks, strokes, or angina.
Exposure to food preservatives among the study population was nearly universal. During the very first two years of participation, an overwhelming 99.5 percent of the volunteers consumed at least one food preservative through their regular diet, demonstrating just how difficult it is for the average consumer to avoid these additives entirely in a modern industrialized food environment.
Higher Preservative Intake Linked to Higher Risk
When the researchers crunched the numbers, the strongest and most concerning statistical associations appeared among the individuals who consumed the largest amounts of certain categories of preservatives.
Participants who reported the highest daily intake of what the researchers categorized as ‘non-antioxidant’ preservatives exhibited a 29 percent higher risk of developing hypertension, commonly known as high blood pressure, compared to those consuming the lowest amounts. Furthermore, these high consumers also faced a 16 percent higher risk of developing broader cardiovascular disease, which encompassed serious medical events such as heart attacks, strokes, and angina.
The data revealed similar concerns for other classes of additives. People who consumed the greatest amounts of antioxidant preservatives similarly demonstrated a 22 percent higher risk of hypertension compared to their peers with lower intake levels.
The two distinct categories of preservatives protect food through entirely different chemical mechanisms. Non-antioxidant preservatives are generally deployed by food manufacturers to prevent potentially harmful microorganisms, including dangerous bacteria and molds, from multiplying in packaged goods. Antioxidant preservatives, on the other hand, are utilized to slow down oxidation, a chemical process that can cause perishable foods to turn brown, develop unpleasant off-flavors, or become rancid before they reach the consumer.
Eight Common Preservatives Stood Out
To gain a more granular understanding of the problem, the researchers also analyzed 17 of the individual preservatives that were most commonly consumed by the study participants during their daily lives.
Out of that group, eight specific preservatives were clearly associated with a higher risk of developing high blood pressure: potassium sorbate, listed as additive E202; potassium metabisulphite, listed as E224; sodium nitrite, listed as E250; ascorbic acid, listed as E300; sodium ascorbate, listed as E301; sodium erythorbate, listed as E316; citric acid, listed as E330; and extracts of rosemary, listed as E392.
Among those, ascorbic acid, commonly recognized as vitamin C when used as an additive and designated as E300, was also specifically associated with an increased risk of broader cardiovascular disease.
Researchers were careful to emphasize that these findings do not mean that consuming a single food item containing one of these ingredients will automatically cause high blood pressure or heart disease. The nature of the research was strictly observational, meaning that it successfully identified statistical associations between high intake levels and adverse health outcomes rather than definitively proving that the preservatives themselves were directly and solely responsible for the increased biological risks.
Dr. Touvier elaborated on the study’s design and broader implications, noting that the research does possess some inherent limitations typical of large observational epidemiological studies. However, she stressed that the findings are fundamentally anchored in highly detailed individual data and that the research team carefully controlled and accounted for other major lifestyle and demographic factors that are known to increase or lower the risk of cardiovascular disease. She pointed out that experimental research available in the broader scientific literature has consistently suggested that certain preservatives may induce oxidative stress within the human body or negatively affect the normal functional pathways of the pancreas.
According to Dr. Touvier, these results strongly suggest that public health authorities and regulatory agencies, such as the European Food Safety Authority in Europe and the Food and Drug Administration in the United States, need to conduct a comprehensive re-evaluation of the risks and benefits associated with these widely used food additives to ensure better public consumer protection. In the meantime, she noted that these findings strongly reinforce existing health recommendations advising the public to favor fresh, non-processed, and minimally processed foods whenever possible, while actively avoiding unnecessary chemical additives. She added that doctors and other frontline healthcare professionals play a vital role in clearly explaining these nutritional recommendations to the general public.
Why Preservatives Might Affect the Body
To better grasp how these chemical substances might influence human health, scientists are actively exploring several biological pathways. One of the leading working hypotheses involves oxidative stress. This physiological state occurs when unstable, reactive molecules accumulate in the body at a faster rate than the body’s natural antioxidant defense systems can neutralize them, potentially leading to cumulative damage to cells, blood vessels, and tissues over a prolonged period.
In addition to oxidative stress, researchers are currently investigating whether certain preservatives could directly influence pancreatic function. The pancreas plays a central and irreplaceable role in regulating blood sugar levels, insulin production, and overall human metabolism, meaning that even subtle disruptions in its normal operations could trigger broader, systemic effects throughout the entire body.
To unpack these mechanisms further, the research team has already initiated follow-up studies to examine how food additives and ultra-processed foods may influence chronic inflammation, oxidative stress markers, metabolic profiles in the blood, and the composition of the human gut microbiota.
The gut microbiota refers to the vast, complex community of bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms that reside naturally within the human digestive tract. These internal microbial populations are receiving intense scientific attention for their critical roles in human metabolism, immune system regulation, and cardiovascular health. By thoroughly examining these underlying biological changes, researchers hope to gain a much clearer understanding of why chronic exposure to certain food additives may be associated with elevated risks of disease, and whether the preservatives themselves are directly contributing to those detrimental physiological effects.