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Well, welcome back everybody.
My name is Josh Klaus.
And I'm Jennifer Seltzer.
And this is another episode of Your Mom on Drugs.
It is a nice sunny day outside, just getting hot here in Texas if you're in the South.
We decided to kind of do a little fun exercise.
I think it was over the holidays, which was many months ago, but we were talking
amongst our family members about food and how basically some people avoid food with
certain preservatives in it. And me being the skeptic that I am, anytime anyone makes
a categorical statement, I'm like, I don't know if that's a thing. So I begged my mom, I was like,
I think we should do one on preservatives. And she was like, no, no, no, for the longest time.
And then finally, we pulled the trigger. And we're like, you know what, let's just let's do it.
Let's talk about it. And so luckily, Dr. Seltzer, the mom on drugs, is going to give us an overview
of preservatives. Basically, the things that we use in food to preserve shelf life and things like
that. She's going to give a more precise definition. But before I let the mom on drugs go into
this wonderful information we're going to do today, I kind of just want to flag and kind of
give some overarching ideas of what we're talking about today. I think the first one is that since
we're in a nutrition space, it's a little bit different than doing pharmaceutical trials,
because you can't just stick a bunch of people in a room and give them a certain diet, and then
another person a certain diet, and then compare outcomes just because humans, that's just not how
humans eat. And it's like, we eat very diverse things. I might have a burger in the morning,
which would be kind of weird. And then maybe some tacos at dinner, and then maybe some celery
tomorrow because I'm feeling bad about myself. But a lot of times these studies are done in like
animal models. And animals, when you feed animals, they don't eat food like we do. They usually give
them like a single pellet, or sometimes they can just eat as much as they'd like. So sometimes it's
comparing apples to oranges when doing nutrition studies and also doing observational studies in
people. The second thing too is the dose makes the poison. So if you consume a large enough dose
of anything, even oxygen, even water, it's called drowning, then it will be bad for you. So that's
why we do studies. That's why we study things. We figure out the appropriate dose at which something
becomes harmful, and then we basically limit the ranges of the doses so that we can kind of live in
a safe zone. And then I think that's it. I think those are the two points that I wanted to raise
before going in. So just to keep in mind that nutritional space is hard to study. It's hard to
pin down causality. Basically, this thing causes that. So you're looking sometimes at a lot of
correlation. But it doesn't mean it's bad. It just means that sometimes it's really hard to find the
smoking gun. You want to add anything to that, Kavi? No, that sounds great. That sounds great.
All right. Well, with that being said, let's talk about preservatives. Let's talk about
preservatives. So when Joshua asked me about doing preservatives, my biggest reservation was it's a
huge topic. And so we're not going to get into the nitty gritty about each individual preservative
that's available. And we're also going to just target primarily food and pharmaceutical
preservatives. More about food than pharmaceuticals just because there's just more reasons to have
preservatives in food. Excuse me. But let me start out just by telling y'all
the definitions of preservatives that I came up with by looking in the dictionary or looking
in resources. So first of all, and it's probably kind of intuitive, a preservative is going to be
a natural or a synthetic compound. And what it's going to do is it's going to help slow or prevent
bacterial growth in foods, medicines, and even your personal care products. So we actually have
preservatives in our makeup and in our body lotions and that as well too. But we're not going to really
focus on that too much today. Yeah. And to flag the difference between natural versus synthetic
is that natural just means it's found somewhere in nature. Yes. Whereas synthetic, it's found
nowhere in nature. It's just something that we have made in the lab that is unique to human
development. Great. Another angle or aspect of a preservative is that again, it's going to
hope to prevent the product from deteriorating either from oxidation because oxygen can create
some chemical reactions that will cause things to break down or preservative is going to kill or
inhibit microorganism growth because microorganisms either they can get added inadvertently due to the
manufacturing process or just by using them. Like if we leave our potato salad out a little bit too
long on that picnic, then you can get some antimicrobial growth. I mean, some microbial
growth. So you've got either antioxidants or antimicrobials as preservatives used in food
and in medications as well too and in your cosmetics. But again, like I said, we're not
going to really talk about cosmetics today. I thought this was really interesting thought for
us to think about. A hundred years ago, we weren't really thinking so much about food preservatives
because all of us were our own little microcosm of providing our own food. We all had our own farm.
We all had our own garden. So we were creating our food. We had our own chickens and cows
and killed them. And we weren't having to go to the grocery store or a market to get our food
items. So preservatives were not necessary because we were cooking everything fresh every day.
Also things were seasonal, right? Like you wouldn't get an avocado in January.
Right. But now we can ship an avocado from a temperate region and then have it delivered
to somewhere in New York and would naturally happen. But then how do you keep that thing fresh
or basically non rotten for the entire duration? Right. And so that's a great segue. So because
we live in the 21st century now in 2024, we can get, we get foods from all over the place.
And so for those foods to be delivered in a safe environment, to be on the shelf in the grocery
store in the safe environment, to be in your home safely before you even open it, we've had to add
things to them called preservatives to reduce bacterial growth or microbial growth as well as
to preserve shelf life. So a couple of things that are done to with preservatives are to,
one of the things is actually, and let me say that these chemicals that are added that we consider
preservatives in food, we're going to talk about food preservatives first and then we're going to
talk about pharmaceutical preservatives. So these chemicals that are added to our food
and our medications are actually tested by the Food and Drug Administration and they're considered
safe. Now, again, when we consider things as safe as Josh, well, I'm sure reiterate to you,
it may not be in 100% of people, but again, there's a large majority where it's shown to be safe.
So we don't know. And these, these preservatives are in smaller amounts. So it's not like large
amounts that you need to like worry about, like you're eating a whole like glob of,
glob of, you know, a nitrate or whatever and stuff. So, I mean, so it's, it's, it's in reasonable
small amounts to protect our food. And so a couple of things that are used to protect our food
are first of all, they'll use wax coatings. Maybe you feel it when you buy a cucumber.
That's the one I think of the most, but you, you add this wax coating, it's safe to eat.
It's usually, it's invisible, colorless, odorless, and it's tasteless, but it helps the produce or
the product stay fresh during shipment. And it reduces food waste and increases the shelf life,
and it improves its appearance. So again, that's the deal is like you, you, I mean,
now a cucumber is probably not going to last for six months. I've seen them in my refrigerator
after a week or two, and you don't probably want to eat that anymore. But for those couple, you
know, again, for the, for that time period, it's going to be more palatable because it is kept more
fresh looking. There are also preservatives that are added to things to prevent changes in color,
flavor, and texture. Those are important things to us when we eat food. So we, things like the,
things like ice cream or salad dressings or mayonnaise, there are things that are added
to those things. So you keep the oil and water from separating because those, they're kind of
emulsion type things. And so you need those things to mix together or it doesn't look so good, you
know. So salad dressings, you know, we have to shake them up. Right. Yeah. Just a basic little
chemistry lesson of, you know, water is obviously made of water and oil is made of usually fatty
substance and fat substance in water doesn't really mix very well. We call fatty substance,
we call it hydrophobic, meaning that it repels water, doesn't like to interact with it. So these
little chemicals, we call them emulsifiers, and then you can make something called emulsion. You
might do that when you're baking, you know, add something to basically, so you can have your
your butters and your other, you know, water-based liquids be able to mix together.
And so I'm sure you've seen maybe before, I don't know if you've, maybe some college kids out there
because I'm definitely guilty of this, of leaving a bottle of salad dressing and never using it. And
then over time, you'll see the two layers start to separate, like those emulsifiers have broken
down. And then so now you're just left with the oil, usually on top because it's less dense,
and then the other stuff on the bottom. So yeah, these things are important to kind of give that
kind of homogeneity or that kind of similar looking liquid so you don't notice that it's
actually a mixture inside of there. So that's really cool. Right. So and then the last thing
that that as far as these preservatives and food, they're going to delay what we call rancidity,
probably people have heard of the word of, you know, it looks rancid or whatever. And so,
so I looked up the definition of rancidity, and it's the natural process of the decomposition
of fats or oils. And so, so these so fats or oils in food will break down. And so they lead to an
undesirable flavor or odor. And usually this this breakdown occurs by what a mechanism called
hydrolysis. So that means that hydrogen, hydrogen ions are added in it causes a chemical reaction
in the oil or fat will break down, or oxidation. So oxygen can do the same thing. So we don't want
our food to be rancid, because then we don't want to eat it anymore. So there are several ways to
prevent rancidity. Because, again, you think about food is a big business. I mean, we've got the
farmers, we've got the grocery store people, we've got the truck industry that delivers them and
stuff. And so to keep them preserved and ready for the market for us to go buy it is really
important for our economy, you know, as well to Yeah, if you're gonna like if you're gonna grow
100 tomatoes, and you want to sell 100 of those tomatoes, you want to delay the rancidity as much
as you can, so you give as much time to consumer to go and buy those tomatoes, you know, for whatever
they need to do. If you're only selling 50, because 50 of them have gone rotten, then yeah, I mean,
you're gonna make half the profit from the same amount of labor that you put in. So from a farmer's
perspective, and a grocery store as well, who probably has to buy these items wholesale,
you know, from growers and producers of these goods, it just benefits everybody to have these
things on the shelf as long as possible. Right. So some ways to prevent rancidity. The first one is
you add inert gases. And this was primarily something that I saw is done to like chip bags.
So you add nitrogen to these bags, it displaces the oxygen, so that you're going to reduce that
oxygenation activity and those chips are going to last longer and stuff. So that's really cool. So
that's why when you open a chip bag, there's far less than you thought there was going to be in
there. So you feel it's all big and puffy. And then it's like, oh, there's like 12 chips in here.
Yeah, so yeah. But they're good chips because they were preserved. And the other thing you
can do is you can add antioxidants. And obviously, that is going to be something that's going to
compensate for oxygen activities or oxidation. So we can have either natural antioxidants,
like vitamin E is one, but they usually have a short shelf life. So they may not last as long
with a natural antioxidant. And we have a lot of synthetic antioxidants as well too,
and semi-synthetic oxidants. We also have what are called metal chelators and oxygen scavengers.
Other ways to reduce rancidity are going to be refrigerating items or vacuum packaging,
keeping things in an airtight container, as well as storing things in a cool, dark area that keeps
microbes from growing as well. And then hydrogenation, which is a way that you can
add a hydrogen ion to certain fats, and it makes them less prone to rancidity. And it's beyond my
intellect as far as exactly how that process works. The prime example that comes, I remember
learning this in biochemistry is Oreos. So you can take vegetable oil and do the process of
hydrogenation and you take something like, basically like vegetable oil. And when you
hydrogenate it, you essentially turn it into an unsaturated fat, and I'm sorry, no, a saturated
fat. And that makes it more solid than a butter compared to vegetable oil, and it actually makes
it solid. And so you actually have this nice creamy stuff that you can make an Oreo out of.
So hydrogenation is actually just the process of altering the fat so that you can basically
change its chemical properties from going from, because I mean, imagine a liquid Oreo that
wouldn't be very good. So you have this nice kind of white, creamy deliciousness that you could eat.
And then I usually just break them apart. And I do the double. You basically break apart one Oreo
and another Oreo, and then you get the double stuff. And it was so good. There you go. There you go.
So again, just to remind everyone that preservatives are going to slow spoilage,
and they're going to help control germs that can cause foodborne illness. Because again, we sure
don't, I mean, we've definitely all read about, you know, food contaminations and stuff that happen
and stuff. And so what we can do to prevent that is what we're going to do. Like I said before,
the food preservatives that are added, we usually do them in low levels. Because, and also this was
interesting too, some preservatives can be multifunctional. They can be an antimicrobial,
as well as an antioxidant, or maybe a chelator as well too. So they can serve, so I guess
again, you're using the smallest amount to have the most function. So again, we'll kind of
get into a little bit more specifics. So the two main types of food preservatives are
antimicrobials and antioxidants. We'll talk first about antimicrobials. And an antimicrobial is a
substance that's used to preserve food to prevent the growth of pathogens and deteriorative
organisms and subsequent spoilage. So you're going to reduce, and it's not just bacteria,
but it's also yeasts and molds as well too. This was really like sobering. Microbiological damage
to foods is the most important problem related to food loss. Approximately 25% of the world's
food supply is lost every year due to microbial damage. That's amazing.
And then we think about third world countries that are not as sophisticated as us. That's why
they get cholera and other disease, because they eat stuff that they shouldn't because it's not
taken care of and stuff. And also probably there might be places, obviously in America,
we have too much food. But in places like that where you're trying to deliver as much food as
possible in places where there might be some food scarcity, if you're losing 25% of it, then yeah,
that is potentially somebody who might not be getting the nutrients they need in order just to
thrive. Being a human. Absolutely. Most of the antimicrobial agents that are added to food
don't fully inactivate the microbial populations, but they inhibit their growth. So they make the
environment for that microbe not very pleasing or accommodating to grow more. So they want to reduce
the development of microorganisms. And so that's how that works. Yeah. This reminds me of a,
doesn't Neosporin work that way? It's an antimicrobial. So it stops the growth rather
than actually kills the bacteria. And there are drugs in that, so they can be bacteriostatic,
and that's that kind of an antibiotic, or they can be bactericidal where they actually kill the
organism. I believe it is a bacteriostatic. Okay. So this is kind of stopping the growth.
It kind of slows it down, but it doesn't eliminate it completely and stuff. But it keeps it so that
it's not going to cause a problem for the length of the shelf life of the food products.
There are different, so antimicrobial activity is different for different food types. That makes
sense. Some may have more oils and fats than others. Some may be more prone to oxidation.
So what preservative goes in foods is assessed item by item. So it's not like a one size fits
all preservative. So that's why when you read your labels on your food, you'll see different things
as preservatives in different foods. Gotcha. So there might be a food that is maybe more acidic
than another food, or it might be a food that has maybe more oxygen species inside of it,
which is going to promote more bacterial growth. You might want to add more antioxidants to one
and then maybe another type of preservative to another. Right. Okay. And that's a great point
too. So the food pH and acidity, they play a big role in the types of microorganisms that can
survive. Bacteria grow in a more alkaline or a higher pH environment, and the yeast and molds
grow in a lower pH environment. But so then our preservatives are going to be different
and they're going to act differently based on pH as well too. So like Josh said, we can increase
the acidity of food to help prevent microbial growth since especially bacteria like to live in
a more basic environment or a more alkaline environment. So if we lower the pH and make it
more acidic, then they can't grow as much. Gotcha. And just to keep in mind too, so we might add an
acid to a certain type of food. I think a nitrite is one of those examples, adding those to like
certain types of meats. But like you said, they're at such low levels that they probably matter to
bacterial growth, but we might not be able to perceive them as much as humans were much bigger
than bacteria. So just to give a context for this, this is a weird tangent, but like you have 10
times as many bacterial cells inside of your own body than you have your normal cells. So you have
about 10 trillion cells in your body and about a hundred trillion microorganisms in your body.
But if you clumped all of those microorganisms together, like if you took them all from all
over your body and you clump them together, that'd be as much as like it would just weigh
three pounds. Like it's like another organ. So like I think it's hard to imagine how tiny these
things are. So a little bit can go a long way because we're talking about very different scales
here. Like these things are much smaller than just your normal human cells. So just to keep in mind,
yeah, these bacterial, and also you want to stop them early from colonizing and congregating.
So you're really trying to prevent them from growing. And so when you can see them in visible
spots, like you've probably seen yeast on bread or you smell your milk going off, that's when they
become large enough to cause a problem. So you're trying to stop basically from them from colonizing.
So great. So like Joshua alluded to, the most effective antimicrobial is an acid.
And so a couple of kinds of acids, they're weak lipophilic organic acids. So that means they're
weak acids, but they like fat. So that's what lipid, you know, lipid means fat. So things that
you may see on your label that are weak lipophilic organic acids are things like sorbate, benzoate,
or propionate. And they work best at a pH of less than 5.5. So they're going to be heading more
towards the acidic level. Yeah. So the lower the number, the more acidic, just to let people know.
Yes. We also have inorganic acids. And so we see our sulfites and our nitrites that are they,
and they are multifunctional preservatives. They can act both as an antimicrobial and an antioxidant.
And you see a lot of them in drinks. They will, so sulfites will inhibit yeast and spoilage,
and also in dehydrated fruits and vegetables. They are also effective against gram negative
bacteria. So they're going to be used in meat to inhibit those, the growth of those, those bacteria.
But interestingly, sulfites can't, they can get degraded kind of rapidly. So that's why sometimes
you'll see when you're looking at the
sulfites, they can get degraded more rapidly. So that's why sometimes you'll see probably your,
like for example, like ground beef doesn't have as long of a, of a like sell-by date than chicken,
you know, because I think that, yeah, maybe it's because I didn't look into this, but I'm like
that the sulfites can be degraded more rapidly so that they get converted to a sulfate and then it
loses its antimicrobial activity. So again, so make sure that you look at your dates, keep your food
refrigerated and or put in the freezer if you can't use it by the day. Actually caveat to that,
I'm not, cause I know I've sent you this article before and, and it's like the best buy date has
nothing to do with spoilage. Okay. So this is a common myth. We're going to squash it now. It is
all having to do with food quality. So whenever you see a best buy date, that is a date that has been
set to say it is best to use by this date or the food item might go off. Meaning it's not going to
be as palatable as it normally is. It has nothing to do with the fact that there might be something
to do with being pathogenic or like a bacteria growing on there. There might be some rancidity,
like we talked about earlier, but the idea that this is good or you're going to get sick from it
is a common misconception. The best way to check to see if you're going to get sick from it is
honestly the smell test. Like if it smells off, if it smells like there's yeast or there's fungus
or there's bacteria, then that's the best way to tell. But in terms of what mom is saying,
I think with something like the sulfites, if it's just preserving its look or if it's preserving
its basically lack of rancidity, then yes, it is the best buy date, but you can actually eat things
well beyond the best buy date and it still be not harmful to you. It just might not look or taste as
good as it did when it was first packaged. Thank you for correcting me on that. You have told me
that before. I apologize. You don't remember everything I tell you. Well, I do actually.
Well, anyway, so there we go. There we go. I forgot many things she taught me when I was young too.
Yeah. Yeah. So the other thing that's common to be used as an antimicrobial, as more acidic,
well, it's kind of as another antimicrobial in food is parabens. And so they have a wider pH range.
So they are actually more active at a basic. They can work at an acidic level, but they can work at
a basic level as well too. So you're going to see them. So they, you'll see a bunch of different,
you'll see a lot of different types of parabens, methylperebin, propylperebin. There's a lot of
different kinds of them. And again, like I said, they've got a wide pH range to be effective as
an antimicrobial. A lot of times you'll see them in cakes or pastries, icings, fillings, soft drinks,
creams, pastes, jams and jellies, olives, pickles and syrups. The longer chained parabens have
better antimicrobial activity, but they are less water soluble. So while the shorter chained
parabens are usually the ones that are found in foods. So while you could, if you have, if you
can have a longer chain, parabens, great. But they, again, a lot of foods have oils in them and stuff.
And so then they're, I'm sorry, a lot of foods have water in them. So if they're not soluble in
the water, then they're not going to work as well. So they are also more effective against yeast and
mold, but they're less active against bacteria, especially gram-negative bacteria. And that makes
sense because they're larger molecules and fungus are just bigger organisms than bacteria. And also
like, especially at a pH of eight, you're tackling more the fungus and molds than you are bacteria
in this case. Also, Dr. Seltzer didn't put this here, but next to the things that are in like
the jams and the jellies and olives and pickles, they're very small percentages, like 0.03%,
0.1%. I assume that's by weight. Like it's what the weighted is. So very small amounts.
Very, very small amounts. If you have a jar of olives and it's a gram, it is 0.1%
of that jar, meaning that is going to be 0.01 grams of this substance, if you're eating the
whole jar of olives. So that would be 10 milligrams. Very small. Very small amount. Now, obviously,
you need to figure out what the actual dose is that's going to be benign versus harmful.
And that's what the FDA has done. They've looked at those. They've figured out what those safe
values are for these preservatives to go with. Yeah. It's a shame that they're not on the
ingredients labels most of the time, like the weighted percentages, because it looks like it's
just equal ingredients. I think a lot of people see these names and they look like scary chemicals,
especially if you're not familiar with them. But if you don't see the relatively low dosage
or understand what they are, then it can be a little unnerving if you're seeing them on the
back of a little one. That's a great point. That's a great point. The other thing too is that
you can combine, and that's why we don't just have maybe one acid as a food preservative,
because you can combine different ones at much lower concentrations. So you'll get an
antimicrobial effect, but at lower concentrations and lower levels of these preservatives as well.
Mixing and matching. Mixing and matching. So what I just talked to you about now were synthetic
preservatives, but there are also natural antimicrobial preservatives. So we've got,
first of all, plant-derived antimicrobial preservatives. And those are the first ones,
well, the ones that are mostly that I'm going to mention are called essential oils.
They have both antibacterial and antifungal properties. And actually, they've been used
naturally for centuries in food products because they just happen in nature and they have a low
risk of having the microorganism develop resistance to them. But they are, that word that Joshua
mentioned earlier, hydrophobic. They don't like water, so they may not work very well in food
with high water content. I'm sorry. High fat content. High fat content. So they might work
well in those like the pastry things where there's a lot of maybe like pre-made pie crusts or something
like that, but not in something like a pickle jar where it's just primarily just water and vinegar.
Right. Right. So if they, you know, they could, so anyway, so the next thing is going to be your
animal-derived antimicrobials. The first one is called lysozyme. And it's actually an enzyme
that's naturally present in eggs as well as mammalian milk. Now it's bacteriolytic. We talked
about that word before. So that means it's going to inhibit growth of the bacteria, but it's not
going to kill the bacteria. But it helps reduce its activity by compromising specifically gram-positive
bacterial cell walls. And so it's used often as a preservative for meat, fish, milk, dairy products,
fruits, and vegetables. So you may see that on your label. That's awesome. Yeah, just a fun little
fact. I just love fun. So lysozyme is found in an organelle, which is a thing inside of your cell.
It's called a lysosome. And what lysosomes are meant there to do is that if there's any type of
leftover material inside of your cell, it's kind of getting in the way. It's a lot of clutter. Think
of it like spring cleaning. It'll go around and chomp it up into individual little bits so that
your cell can recycle the individual subunits of things, things like amino acids or sugars or blah,
blah, blah. So it can build from that and expel the waste. And a lot of this times, it can be
bacteria that actually, that it'll chop up the cell wall of a bacteria. What Ma mentioned is a gram
positive. That means that its cell wall is made of something called peptidoglycan. And so to cut that
all up, to basically get rid of that bacteria, you can use this enzyme to basically chop up that
bacteria into its component part. So basically reusing what nature has already given us is this
amazing enzyme that's inside of this organelle to already degrade the things that we would degrade
inside of our own body. So you can just do it in really high concentrations and then just apply it.
So really cool. Thank you for that very fun fact. You're welcome. So another animal derived
antimicrobial is called lactoferrin. It's also present in naturally in mammalian milk. So in
milk of mammals, we're mammals and there are other animals that are animals as well too. So
it has great antimicrobial activity against bacteria, fungi, yeast and viruses. It's actually a
chelating agent. And what that means is it targets the iron that microbes will use to reproduce. And
so if you limit their iron, then you're going to then decrease the bacterial counts and growth.
Gotcha. So it's almost like being a competitor. It's like, I'm going to take that iron from you
because it has a stronger affinity for the iron than the bacteria. It's like basically a stronger
magnet. That's really cool. Yeah. So you'll see this type of a preservative in infant formula,
meat, wine and dairy. And it's also, you'll see it sometimes in skincare products and oral care
products as well. So another one that you'll see is an animal derived antimicrobial is called
chitosan. And you get it from crust crustacean shells or the cell wall of aspergillus is a
bacteria fungus. Oh, I don't know. I can't remember. Let's find out real quick. Let me
find out really quick. Oh, bother. Sorry. This is the power of editing.
It's a mold. So you can get, am I, I don't matter. Okay. Okay. Another animal derived
antimicrobial is called chitosan. And you get it either from crustacean shells. So like crabs,
you know, or the cell wall of aspergillus Niger, which is a mold. And so this, this particular
antimicrobial has activity against spoilage, yeast and bacteria, but it's insoluble at neutral or
high pH. So you're going to use it in more acidic things. So you're going to use it in beverages. So
you think about sodas and stuff like that are going to have lower pHs and stuff. So yeah,
things that you would use like the soul fights for. Yeah. And the fighting against bacteria.
That's really cool. And then the third area of natural antimicrobials is bacterial derived. So
you've got bacteria oceans, which have, they're an antibacterial peptide and they're produced by
lactic acid bacteria. And so they have a broad range of antimicrobial properties, but the only
one that we, that's actually been used in food or permitted in food is one called nice in,
and it's used primarily in table olives, cheeses, and meat products. And then the other bacterial
derived antimicrobial is called Natomycin and it's another antibiotic. It's produced by fermenting
streptomyces and it controls fungal growth. So it doesn't have any activity against bacteria and
viruses, but it has low solubility and water. So you're going to use it. You're going to see it
used primarily as a surface preservative for meat and cheese products. That's amazing. I'm so, I mean,
I would hate to be a bacteria. It seems like you have so many enemies. Yes.
But we want those enemies. So, yeah.
But you have to have so many tools to fight against them. And it's really neat that we've,
you know, kind of isolated certain tools that they've used against some of their natural,
you know, competitors, either it be another bacteria or a fungus to be able to help us
preserve some of our food. It's really neat. Yeah. So that's kind of, and there's probably
more to say about antimicrobials, but we're going to switch gears now and we're going to talk about
antioxidants that are used in food. And again, remember, oxidative reactions can produce
substances that are going to affect the food flavor, color, odor, shelf life, and consumer
acceptance. So oxidative reactions are going to shorten the lifespan of food products pretty,
pretty much and stuff. So what, what are ways that we can, what are antioxidants that can be used to
help minimize this? One of the things is that you can protect the, protect food substances from heat
and light by what we call oxidation, but that would be like time consuming and probably not
real practical for us to try to be always putting our food away from heat and light and stuff.
So there's some more practical ways to minimize oxidation. I think that I've got, I think that's
a mistake. I don't think it's oxidation. I'm going to have to look that up again, Pop, you know,
because it doesn't make sense for it to say that it's oxidative reactions that we want to avoid.
And then we're telling me oxidation to fix it. So I've got to look that up again. I think I made a
mistake. Okay. Okay. Because we want to minimize oxidation. And so oxidation is going, antioxidants
are used to reduce food deterioration, reinsidity and discoloration. So the two most common food
oxidative problems are what we call enzymatic browning and then lipid reinsidity. Okay. So
anybody's had fruit. I mean, I just had an avocado this morning and there was a little
bit of browning on it. So that's the bi-product. So it's an enzymatic, it's an oxidative, it's an
oxidation and there's phenolic compounds in these products. And so it's this thing called polyphenol
oxidase or PPO. So it's in fruits and vegetables. And so that's what it gets oxidized and that's
why it turns brown. So it's called PPO. PPO. Polyphenol oxidase. Polyphenol oxidase. You'll see
it also in ready to use salads. You know, they, after they'll, you know, they'd stay a few days
and then they don't get so good or, or fresh cut fruit, you know, apples are, you know, so,
and then the other one is lipid reinsidity so that you get your, your unsaturated fatty acids in your
food. In fact, containing foods can decompensate. So those are the two main ways that we're going
to use antioxidants to prevent those actions. So the available antioxidants that we have are,
first of all, enzymatic browning inhibitors. So they're going to inhibit that PPO. And so the
common ones that are used are ascorbic acid, citric acid, and sodium chloride. So you think
about sprinkling things on apples to prevent it. And you think about using a lemon or a lime,
that's citric acid. So that's why it's going to help with that enzymatic browning process.
Yes. That's not vitamin C. Okay. There we go. I thought so. Yes. All right. So you're sprinkling
either vitamin C, the acid that you normally find in citrus fruits or sodium chloride, which
it's not, that's not table salt. That's sodium chloride. So it's like, it's CLO, right? I think
it has an oxygen on it. Right. And it's going to be that. Yeah. Or NAO. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah.
Forgot my chemistry. But it's got to have a CLN there too, because it's got chloride on it. Maybe
it has more than one oxygen anyway. So then we've got lipidine antioxidants. And so they are going,
again, we want to keep the food odor, color, texture, and flavor to be preserved. So
ways that oxidative reinsidity happen is you're going to get either auto-oxidation. So it
oxidizes itself or you'll get it due to light or you'll get it due to heat. So they, they're
going to affect the double bonds of unsaturated fatty acids. So then when that happens, you get
then free radicals developed. So then you're going to get these antioxidants, these lipid
antioxidants that serve as that free radical scavenger. So they're going to look for those.
A free radical is just another word for an oxygen molecule or atom that has unbounded from the
large lipid. So because it is unbounded and oxygen has a electronegativity attached to it, it just
wants to attach to a lot of things. And a lot of times that that's what we call oxidation. And it's
going to essentially attach, potentially become that PPO, that polyphenol oxidase that we talked
about earlier. But if you have an antioxidant and it has a large affinity for that free radical,
it can bind to it and basically hold it in place so that oxygen can't go and do the thing that it
was going to do. So you're essentially just trying to catch something that potentially do damage,
almost like a fly that's in your house. And then you're essentially wanting to either catch it or
swat it before it is able to go and do the things that it does. So excellent, excellent. So we have
some common lipid antioxidants, including nitrites, which we've always talked about as being an
anti microbial as well. So fights and then we've got these synthetic phenolic compounds called
SPC. Since these are going to be the things that you probably see a lot of the abbreviations BHT,
BHA, their butylated things. And I don't need to mean they're large scientific names that we
don't really necessarily need. But these these synthetic phenolic compounds, whether they're
butylated hydroxy toluene, butylated hydroxy anisole, and tert-butyl hydroquinone. Those
are the common ones. And they're most commonly used in many foods that contain lipids and fats.
They're very stable at high temperatures and they can even retain their antioxidant functions after
they're baked or fried. Yeah, you're often trading size for I guess like abundance because like
nitrite and sulfide are very small molecules. It's a sulfur attached with three oxygen molecules and
nitrite is the same with nitrogen. But with these large ones, you think about it's just
harder to break things down to other larger and more complicated with heat and light. They just
have more chemical bonds holding them together. So they're essentially just going to have they're
going to make it have a longer shelf life because even with these smaller ones, they're going to
break down easier just because they have less chemical bonds. So you just want larger molecules
sometimes if you're going to have something last really or you want them to last a long time.
So that's a great point. So well, like we talked about with antimicrobials, there are also some
natural antioxidants. So again, remember we want to inhibit oxidation. So we want things to act
like either a key chelating agent or a free radical scavenger. So the most common natural
antioxidants are the alpha talcopheral that's found in vitamin E. Or there's some phenolic
acids that are commonly found in some herbs and spices such as rosemary, basil, oregano, sage,
cinnamon, nutmeg, and cumin. Or we have things that are called flavonoids and carotenoids as well too
that act as natural antioxidants. And then sometimes we'll see more of these used because
there's a desire for more natural products in food as well as there have been some reports
of some allergic reactions to those synthetic phenolic compounds. So it's a way to avoid
a potential allergic reaction in somebody who might have one. Not everybody, but just there's
going to be a... Yeah. And we'll get into that in a little bit. Yeah. Because also just the
plant a flag here is like things that are in nature have been in here for a very long time.
Therefore, the logic there is like organisms have found a way to break those down easier.
Whereas something has synthetic could potentially live in a system for a very long time because
your body doesn't have the enzyme to break it down. So I think there's obviously a fear of like,
what if this stays in my body for a really long time? Now, just as a caveat, your body has a lot
of things, especially large stomach acid that is able to break down big things and just really,
really easily. Just not many things can survive your stomach down to the rest of your body.
Also just planning a flag here, just because something is natural doesn't mean that it's safe.
It just means that it's from nature. Things like cyanide, things like arsenic are very natural,
but in high enough doses, they can cause a lot of trouble for somebody. And then there are things
that are synthetic at low doses that are just not harmful because they're at such a low dose
that your body knows what to do with them. So just want to plan a flag there of, I think there is
this kind of movement now that natural is better. And sometimes it is, but sometimes it's not. I
don't think we can lump things into two categories that easily and get to this categorical statement
because it's natural, it's good. There are certain things about natural things that are good
and vice versa with synthetic, but just like most things in life, everything is a trade off.
Do you want more natural things? You're probably going to have a shorter shelf life.
And pay more.
And pay more. And also it's going to cause farmers more of a headache and you're passing that cost
onto somebody else. But if you have synthetics, longer shelf life, but maybe potentially if you're
in a sensitive population, it could cause some harm. So it really does depend on the individual
and we're going to talk about that in just a moment.
Okay. All right. So that was talking about food preservatives. So let's switch gears and let's
talk about pharmaceutical preservatives. And there's some similarities and there's a few
differences as well too. So again, medications also need to have preservatives because you don't want
to have microbial growth in your medications so that you don't get a severe infection when you
ingest it or have it administered to you. So they help to maintain product sterility.
And they're going to have different types of medication products. We're not just talking about
tablets. We're going to talk about that in a minute. We're talking about your oral liquids
or your injectable medications or topical preparations because they're in a more liquid
type of a form.
So things like NyQuil or insulin or things like that.
Or antibiotics that you have to get in the hospital or things like that. So this was really
interesting is when you think about it, because again, you're wanting to keep the patient safe
because they're already not well because they need a medication. And the last thing you want to do is
inject a microbe and make them have some sort of a severe infection. So there's lots of factors
that are considered when you select a preservative.
And we talked about some of these already. First of all, concentration.
Then solubility. How well will it mix in that particular medication that you're using it in?
Or the pH, so the acidity or alkalinity of that particular preservative. Stability. How long will
it last? Does it just separate as soon as you put it in there? That's not going to be used very well.
Compatibility. You want to make sure it's not toxic. You want it to be inexpensive. Oh my gosh,
if the preservative costs three times as much as the medication, that's not going to go well.
So you want to, again, we want it to be, we don't want it to affect the taste or the odor
or the color of the medication. And we want to make sure it has activity against microbes.
And that also that it doesn't affect the product container, that it doesn't stick to the product
container so that then it's going to cause somehow the product to break down because of the fact that
it's sealed up against the prescription bottle or the plastic bottle that it's contained in.
So we've already talked about the fact that bacteria grow better in a more alkaline environment
with molds and yeast favoring a more acidic environment. So most microorganisms grow the
best between a pH of three and nine. So our antimicrobials are going to kind of operate
in that with those parameters in mind. Again, we talked about the fact that we want to use
the lowest effective concentration of an antimicrobial and it's got to be a proven
effective against that targeted antimicrobial. Some of our pharmaceutical products and specifically
let's think about our ophthalmics. If anybody uses contact lens solution or has to use eye drops
or if you do need an injectable, there are so many more injectables that are available now.
Insulin was one that Joshua talked about. There's so many varieties of insulin. There are now some
of those diabetes medications that are in pens. So they're injectables as well too.
Yeah, things like go Zimbik as well.
Yes. So things that are more in an injectable or ophthalmic, those products get sterilized
first. But then some of them will also need a preservative, especially if they have a longer
storage plan or they're a multi-use container. Think about that. So if you've got a one and done
eye drop, if it's just in a little tiny bottle or your injectable is a one and done, that means
it's only for one patient, then you might not see preservatives in those because you're not going to
be keep punching it or keep using the thing over and over. But the more you use something like
that, the more microbes can get input into that bottle. So the need for preservatives in those
multi-use containers. So that's important. But also non-sterile pharmaceutical preparations
can be susceptible to microbial growth. So we will see antimicrobial preservatives in
them as well. So we're thinking the ones that are going to be most susceptible to microbes growing
in them are going to be aqueous preparations so that more water-based preparations like syrups
or emulsion suspensions, Nyquil or children's Tylenol or things like that. Or also your semi-solid
preparations like creams and gels, Volt-Harin gel, for example, for arthritis or your
oral inhalation. So patients with asthma, or there's such a variety of oral inhalations for
that. Or what we call lozenges, lozenges are cough drops, things for a sore throat. And there's
one dosage form called a troche and there's really, I think, just one medication that uses
that dosage form and it's for oral fungus in your mouth, oral candida in your mouth so that you can
suck on this thing and it's called a troche and it'll kill the yeast in your mouth and stuff.
Wow, that's really cool.
So with those, then the microbes will target that water area and especially with an emulsion.
Emulsions are kind of like the salad dressing thing. So there's a couple of things that you'll
see in medicine. One is called intralipid and it's a fat emulsion that you use in a
in a, they call it parenteral nutrition. And so when people are really sick and they can't eat,
they've got to get their nutrients. So they've got to get fats as well as other nutrients. And so,
but this is a white milky liquid and so it's an emulsion and so you want to make sure it stays
mixed. And then there's also a paint or an anesthetic called Dippervan and it's made to
help to make people fall asleep. It's also this milky thing. And so if it separates the bacteria
are more likely to grow in the water phase. So you're going to want to make sure that your
preservatives target the water phase of these emulsions. So very interesting. I thought it was
very interesting. So, but again, so you're going to see, you're going to, you want those
antimicrobials to be in these agents to keep that bacteria and yeast and mold from growing in those
particular products. Our products that have like higher alcohol content, because like the liquid
Nyquil that has, it may not have reached this, it might have reached this alcohol content,
but if you have a 15% alcohol content in an acidic media or an 18% alcohol content in an alkaline or
basic media, then you may not necessarily need a preservative added because the alcohol is going
to is, is kind of a preservative in and of itself. But so alcohol containing products may or may not
need a preservative added to that depending on their concentration. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
I have fun. Another fun fact is like actually when beer was first being brewed, actually,
you use yeast to brew beer and just another microorganism. And actually, anytime that the
alcohol content went above, it went above 2%. So 2% by volume, the yeast would die. It was basically
became too toxic. If anyone's ever drinking beer, it can obviously go between like four to sometimes
even 10%. So how did that happen? Well, we artificially selected for yeast that could survive
those higher alcohol contents. And obviously due to natural, well, this is artificial selection, but
by selection, you could breed strains higher and higher and higher, which is obviously you can do
that with wine as well. Wine obviously famously gets around the 15% range. So these things
naturally will kill organisms at around that 2% area. But because of this selection, some of these
organisms can survive in higher percentages. So which is why alcohol, yes, natural toxin to us
as well as most other organisms. But it makes us feel good sometimes. Yes, sometimes maybe. So
this is one thing that I didn't mention when we were talking about antimicrobials and the food
aspect of our preservatives, but how on earth do antimicrobial preservatives work? So they're going
to interfere with microbial growth, multiplication, and metabolism. And they can do that in a variety
of ways. They can modify the permeability of the cell membrane. And so the cell content can leak
out. Or you can break open the cytoplasm and cause it to leak out. You can cause the cytoplasm,
which is that stuff inside the cell, it can all coagulate together. And so then the cell's going
to die. Or you can interfere with a metabolic process in a cell. And so that that could,
maybe the cell wall doesn't get made or something or enzymes don't get formed. And so then the cell's
going to die. You can have also oxidation and hydrolysis processes as well too that will cause
those bacteria, molds, or yeast to die. So those are kind of the mechanisms behind antimicrobials.
Cool. So another thing that you're going to see in your medications, and it's primarily going to
be in your tablets and capsules, are what we call excipients. So we're talking about preservatives,
but I'm like, these are kind of preservatives, but they're kind of not. But I didn't want us to
not talk about medications and preservatives without, because people would think, well,
what about tablets kind of thing and stuff? So you are the mom on drugs. There you go.
You know. So the definition of an excipient is an inactive ingredient added to a pharmaceutical
preparation to sustain product stability as well as to give the desired color and taste.
These excipients are considered what we call inert or inactive, but they could potentially become
part of a chemical or physical interaction with a drug molecule. So you've got to be careful about
how much and what you put into a tablet. So essentially on their own, they're inert,
but in conjunction with something else, they might cause an inert. So you're going to,
but the studies are going to be done with pharmaceutical companies before those products
ever come to be, you know, so that we don't have, because if we get a tablet and it doesn't work,
why are we going to buy the tablet? So we've got to make sure that that's dealt with. So here's a
couple of reasons why we have excipients and I've given a little bit of them. So some of the times
they're added as a solid or a liquid mass to the medication to kind of bulk up the medication,
or they can help, help with the dissolution, help the tablet or the capsule to dissolve. So you
increase it's what we call their bioavailability or how much of the medication actually gets into
your body. It also can help optimize palatability or how tasty it is or just the texture of it. They
can also aid in manufacturing process and they can also promote drug stability. So there's a couple
of types of diluents that you'll see in towel. I mean, I'm sorry, there are a couple of types
of excipients that you'll see in tablets. The first are what we call diluents and these are
the bulking agents. So sometimes maybe there's just a little tiny bit of powder that's necessary to
make a tablet, but you can't make a tablet out of that. So they'll add these bulking agents to be
able to deliver the effective amount of medicine or medicinal powder that you need to get. Also
sometimes you need binders and these help to bind things and put that tablet better together
because they're all compressed very tightly and stuff and so that's going to help with that
process. You also don't want them to fall apart just in the bottle. Now some tablets are designed
to dissolve, but that's a different type of a tablet. So again, the next one is going to be
disintegrants. So they're going to promote drug release. Then you've got some coating agents or
some gliders. So they're going to help the tablets not to stick to the machinery while they're being
made. I never thought about that. That'd be awful. Just like sticking everywhere. Yeah, like oh my
gosh, like when I've made pie crusts and then I forget to flour my rolling pin and then it all
sticks to the wax paper. I'm like, well, that was not smart. So yeah. So maybe some of these are
also to help with the manufacturing process as well. That makes sense. Right. And then you also
have coating agents for tablets that can mask taste or odor. They can prevent drug degradation
or control drug release or improve drug appearance. And when I think about these, I think about the
like interior, like there's some, maybe some ibuprofen that might be more coated so that
you're going to slow the ability of the drugs to release from the tablet. And then it helps
not affect your, hurt your stomach so much because those drugs can hurt you.
Some have sometimes have stomach issues associated with them. You might say then,
well, you talked about tablets, but what about capsules? Well, there are two types of capsules.
I'm sure everybody's had one of these either a hard gelatin capsule or a soft gelatin capsule.
And with hard gelatin capsules, they'll add actually freeze dried powders into them to help
maintain a pH stability or with soft gelatin capsules. So actually either add oils to help
solubilize lipid soluble drugs, or they'll add a surfactant in there to keep everything from
sticking to the inside of the capsule. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah.
Cause you want it to go all the way down. You want to stick anywhere. Right. Yeah.
So while they're not actually, we're not talking about them either being an antioxidant or an
antimicrobial, they're in medications to help, you know, preserve their stability to help them to be
to be useful. So, and if when we post the material on the podcast, there is a list of some,
I've got a table of common preservatives that are used in different pharmaceutical products.
Yeah. And you can take a look at those. If you are looking at the bottles, you know, what's inside,
I actually have a friend who is allergic to one of the coatings of either a tablet or the capsule.
So she has to basically find tablets without that coating. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't say allergic,
maybe more sensitive. But it's like, we're going to get into sensitivity versus allergic in a little
bit, because this is a great segue into, okay, we've talked about, we've spoken the glories of
preservatives and how they can really keep things on the shelf for a really long time.
But sometimes there can be some problems with them. And I think we're going to go into maybe
sometimes what some of those problems can be. Obviously with any chemical that you put inside
of your body, there could be an effect or no effect depending on the dose, depending on its
chemical nature. So we're just going to talk about some of those things. There you go. So,
so there can be some potential problems with preservatives and some, and we've, we may have
seen these in the news or, you know, blogs or just articles and stuff over time. So there are
sometimes, there are, there may be some preservatives that we need to minimize or avoid,
and it just depends on the person. We talked about sodium nitrites and remember they're going to
help to stabilize and color and flavor meat. And they do prevent harmful bacterial growth.
But when meat is heated to high temperatures or it's combined with stomach acid, sometimes the
sodium nitrite can produce nitrosamines. And there have been some relationships between nitrosamines
and the development or an increased risk of developing pancreatic and colorectal cancer.
So while it's, it's not a, it's not a, if then, I mean, it's not a absolute, you know, there's
just enough evidence that's like, you want to just be careful, especially if you have a propensity of
family history of these, or you're just concerned about that. Yeah. And just to answer that,
because I'm going to, I'm going to basically be the, let's put this in context voice. This,
when you cook any meat to a high temperature really has to do with cooking method, you're
going to produce some of these chemicals that can be linked to these certain types of cancers.
And a lot of these chemicals that provided the correlation to cancer were actually done in rodent
studies. And like I said earlier in the podcast is like when you're doing rodent studies, it's not a
similar correlation to when humans eat. So for example, when you, when they did control trials
to feeding these to people and they just had them eat cooked meat. And then they noticed their
nitrosamine levels go up a certain amount. But then when they had them eat that, like a quote
unquote balanced diet with things like vegetables and fiber, actually the benefit of eating that
meat with fiber actually decreased the amount that the nitrosamines entered into circulation.
So it actually counteracted the effect. So this is very similar to the artificial sweetener
cancer link, which my mom is laughing right now because she has a giant jug of diet Coke in front
of her. But recently this has happened over the decades that artificial sweeteners kind of get a
bad rap in terms of causing cancer. But, and I can't remember, I think it was the WHO. I can't
remember which agency classified it as a cancer risk. The amount of diet Coke you would have to
drink. I think it's like, it was either like 12 to 15 bottles a day to get the requisite dose for it
to have any type of semblance of raising your risk for cancer. So a lot of times these agencies will
err on the side of caution and they'll say, Hey, by the way, there is some, there's some, there's
some signal here in this noise, but the amount of noise that you need to actually get a signal
signal is pretty substantial. So I'm still pretty skeptical about this, even though that there's
a slight elevation of the risk here. But if you want to limit the amount of, you know,
risks that this does, don't just eat hot dogs and cook them on them, eat them in a balanced meal,
like add some fiber, some vegetables to your diet, because that's going to help the nutritional
process. Anyways, I'm off my soap box. No, I agree. I mean, like our deli meats, they're,
they're high in nitrates, but I was, I agree with Josh as well too. If, if this was more of a,
a health problem for us, we would see a whole lot more in the literature than we do. You know,
I mean, this is, this is again, um, there's a potential and so people have to cover their risk,
you know, by, by telling us this, but yeah, I think, and even if there were rising rates
in these cancers, which I haven't looked at the epidemiology, I think the, the thing is,
it's like, you want to look at the right smoking gun and the right smoking gun here might not be
that the eating of these meats, it actually might be that people aren't eating enough vegetables.
And so like, you want to make sure that you're targeting the right behavior. So that when you're
giving the right advice to people, that that is actually going to cause the greatest change. I
mean, I can tell so many people how many times that people said back, I think this is back in
the early nineties, that it was recommended like, Oh, things with a lot of fat are the things that
are making us fat. And so we removed most, we had fat free everything. And guess what? Obesity rates
just continue to rise. And it's just because people just ate a lot of food. And the thing that we know
now is that it's not really glucose. It's not really lipids. It's actually just the over
consumption of a lot of calories. And actually the best way to maintain a healthy weight is to eat
less of those things and exercise more. But we, we, we convince people based on certain types of
erroneous data that by eating this much fat, and if you replace it with something else, you're going
to be fine. And it just wasn't, it wasn't good advice, unfortunately. And it led to people
getting this false idea that they could just eat as many fat free things that they wanted and they
would be okay. And it's just not true. So I'm really key on giving, getting the right smoking
gun because when you send people down the wrong path for the wrong reason, it can kind of, it takes
time to drag people back to square one. And especially with public health messaging, it just
takes a long time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, all right, I'm off. We can talk about sulfites now.
You're good. So remember we also talked about sulfites, that they're weak acids and they're
used for antimicrobial activity. In some patients, they may have, they may cause an allergic reaction,
especially in patients with asthma. So you just want to make sure that you, you know, you're going
to know if that's you and stuff. And so you're going to have to look at those and stuff. So
you're just going to look for labels and avoid products if they have asthma, if you have an
asthma issue and stuff. So yeah, I looked a bit at the epidemiology of this. It says about around
500,000 individuals or less than 0.05% of the population could potentially be afflicted by
this sensitivity. So like mom said, you're just going to have to do a bit of detective work after
you eat things and you start feeling a bit uncomfortable. It could be the sulfites. I would
compare this very similarly to like, a lot of sulfites have actually been banned from a lot of
different food products now, because it's very similar to like, we can't eat peanuts on airplanes,
because there are people who just have this very severe allergic reaction to any form of peanut.
So it's basically better safe than sorry. But I would say it affects a very small number of people.
So you can still find sulfites in certain things. But I would say you, on average, you probably won't
be that person. But if you are, yeah, keep mindful of those labels. Yeah. So the next one to talk
about are what we call trans fats. And this kind of ties into what Joshua was just talking about as
far as fats are concerned. But this is important. So trans fats, they're partially hydrogenated oils,
and they've actually been banned in the United States in our food due to heart disease. There
actually are direct correlations with trans fats and causing adverse effects in heart disease.
They will cause us to have an increase in our bad cholesterol and a decrease in our good cholesterol.
So increases in LDL and decreases in HDL, which is not what we want. So trans fats were effective
in prolonging the shelf life of foods, and they could also withstand higher cooking temperatures.
And they tasted great. Yeah, they really are good. And actually, this was really interesting. They
were initially introduced, they were introduced in the early 1900s to replace butter and lard.
Oh, interesting. Yeah. Okay. So this is a key point to remember. Foods can be labeled as no
trans fat if they have less than 0.5 grams of trans fat in them. So that's less than 500 milligrams,
but it's per serving. So if you eat more than one serving of something that has less than 0.5 grams
of trans fat in it, then you're going to be getting up there and you do it on a regular basis,
you're going to be getting those trans fat levels that are not safe. So you just need to be careful.
We all need to be careful as far as watching the labels and then the serving size that we get,
so that we are able to just maintain our health. So partially hydrogenated oils like these trans fats,
they will stay not as a solid or they won't be a saturated fat at room temperature.
So they increase these risks. And so if you have an increase in your bad cholesterol and a decrease,
I mean, if you have an increase in your bad cholesterol and a decrease in your good cholesterol,
it increases your risk for heart attacks, stroke, and diabetes. And those are things that we don't
want to have and stuff. So whereas fully hydrogenated oils, they become a saturated fat at room
temperature and they have not been associated with heart disease risk.
Those good Oreos. Just don't eat too many of them. That's the thing.
What can we say? So another thing that you've probably heard about, especially if you love
Asian food, is monosodium glutamate. So it enhances flavor and texture in food and in
enhances flavor and texture in foods that Asian food soups and other, and it's also in other
processed foods as well too. Also commonly known as MSG.
MSG. Yes. There is some evidence that it can cause some hypersensitivity reaction in people,
but again, it's like the sulfites. You're going to know who you are. But the other thing with MSG
is that it is, it is, it adds a ton of extra sodium to your diet. So if you're already on
the borderline, as far as your blood pressure is concerned, eating a bunch of extra sodium or salt
can make your blood pressure go up higher. So you just want to be careful with that.
Yeah. I looked into this too. Actually MSG per unit gram has less sodium than traditional table
salt. So they do have sodium inside of it, but it's actually a better sodium alternative than
table salt. Also a Cochrane review talked about a meta-analysis of sodium. Basically, if you have
hypertension, then actually increasing your sodium actually worsens that hypertension.
But if you don't have hypertension, if you have good blood pressure, then actually adding extra
sodium only really maybe makes your hypertension worse by about 0.3% compared to the hypertension
group, which is around 3%. So if you already have good blood pressure, not much to worry about. But
mom said, if you have hypertension, if you have high blood pressure, best to avoid the extra sodium
and because it could potentially exacerbate your problem. Another fun fact, I just read this article
last night. There was the first allergy documented in Japan to MSG. So we should probably differentiate
between, we did a whole episode on allergies, but allergy versus sensitivity. So allergies
literally pertaining to your immune system. Your immune system literally identifies this is bad.
We're going to attack it even though it really isn't bad. Sensitivity is just, something happens
in your body physiologically, something like celiac disease, or I wouldn't say celiac disease
because that's an autoimmune disease, but gluten sensitivity would be something like you eat bread
and it could not even be gluten, but you eat bread and it doesn't make you feel very good. That's a
bread or gluten sensitivity. Whereas if your immune system is involved, we call that an allergy.
March, 2024, just case study of this young woman and they exposed her to MSG and she had this immune
response, which I thought was great timing. Great timing for our topic. Yeah, I was like, wow.
Yes. So you know, biology is wild. There you go. There you go. One of the other things that has
been a food issue in the past was the, you know how there are food dyes in food. And so this was
food dye yellow, number five and six. And so it's like artificial coloring that you'll see in candy
or cereal. And some patients may have a sensitivity to this, especially those with asthma. So again,
if you know about it, it's just something to be aware of. Yeah, I've read into this a little bit
more too. And it seems to be because of things, certain diseases are just so random when they
flare up. I think anybody recently, if anybody has had long COVID, they know that these symptoms
just kind of appear out of nowhere. And so I think it's easy to identify the thing that you did the
day over the day before that triggered it, which is why we need to do randomized double blind
control trials so that you can weed out the noise and try to find a signal. So some studies have been
done with these food colorings of people with asthma and basically did it cause an asthmatic
attack? And a very small percentage of people, it did. But most people who claim to have an
asthma attack, it didn't really. So I'm not negating the fact that it does cause it for a certain
amount of people. But I think with things like asthma and other basically diseases that aren't
as predictable when they flare up, like my mom, she gets migraines and I don't know if they're
not predictable, right? They just happen. So I mean, I could be like, well, maybe it was the diet
Coke you had. And she'd be like, absolutely not. There's no way. And it's probably not. But I'm
saying like you can easily, we have such a recency bias of things that we just did to think that
that actually caused the thing. But if you know anything about biology, you just know how many
things are going on in your body all the time. Like even things when you're getting sick from a
bacteria or virus, it has an incubation period. There's a time where it's growing inside of your
body before you start to feel symptoms. So unfortunately with things like this, it is so
hard to do really good rigorous science because it's a, it's expensive. It's time prohibitive.
You have to find the people, you have to bring them in, you have to do the trials, you have to
watch them over a long period of time. And that just costs a lot of money. So a lot of times
people will just assume I'm just going to stay away from this. But when you really look at it
and you think is the juice actually worse, the squeeze, it doesn't seem like it. But again,
you could be that one individual who is sensitive to the thing or even allergic to this thing.
And I'd say too, and again, I've not ever been to an allergist, but I know people that have,
they do have panels where they can test people for allergic reactions to certain things. Now,
whether these dyes are on that panel, I'm not sure. But I mean, if they are, then that would be
another way to definitively determine whether or not you're allergic to a particular thing.
That's a good point. Yeah, because there's a lot of things out there. And sometimes you just want
to know what to avoid if a person can do a panel. Right. So the last thing as far as problems with
food preservatives are parabens. And so there was a little bit of stuff about hypersensitivity,
but again, it's kind of like that maybe, maybe not. It depends on the person. But one thing that I
read about, which I thought was interesting, but it has not been definitively proven. It was just
something that it's like, saw this primarily in animals, don't know what it's going to do in humans.
But they talked about the fact that parabens could be what we call an endocrine disruptor compound,
which means potentially that it had, it was having effects on estrogen receptors. And so potentially
we think about breast cancer. And so it's, the evidence is really pretty controversial. There's
been evidence both in studies and epidemiological studies that have linked paraben exposure to breast
cancer, but it also could negatively interfere with some endocrine targets that are relevant to
breast carcinogenesis. So we don't know really whether or not this is really true or not. And
the actual material trials, data, literature that I was reading were a number of years old.
And I haven't, I didn't see a whole lot more more recently, so I'm not sure this is panning out,
but it was just something like, hmm. So I really think more data are needed before we really say
that parabens could really have an actual impact on whether or not women develop breast cancer.
Yeah. Cancer research is so tough because I mean, there's so much time that you need to wait,
you know, and sometimes people just don't want to wait. So I think this is one of those examples
where, yeah, it just depends on your risk assessment. Like do you, and it's cool that
there are products now that are coming out as paraben free. So just in case people are more
risk averse and they want to have those products, they can. But like mom said, I think a lot of these
things are very, they're not as clear cut. Right. And again, too, I, again, I did not dive deep into
this, but my, my other thought is we're talking about this too, is the concentrations of parabens
in the food or the tablet that you're taking, how much of that do we need to ingest before
there's going to have this impact on, on estrogen? That's a great question. A lot of animal models,
they'll, they'll give them a ton that is just not, you know, not realistic. It's just like,
does this have the proof of concept of doing this thing? And yeah, I mean, even in California,
like California, I can't remember what the, the law is, but they have this thing as like,
if there's any link to cancer whatsoever, then we have to put a label on it saying this could
potentially be chrysanogenic. I mean, it's on coffee. It is on, it is on covers of weight
equipment and who's eating weight equipment. And I was like, I mean, maybe you touch it and put it
in, but it's like, that is a level of, I'm sorry to use the word, that is a level of paranoia that
I just don't think that people should walk around with their life. I mean, it's just like, everything
is potentially unsafe. And sometimes that's actually true. Like there's nothing as pure safety.
And as my mom talked about earlier, safe just means on average, like, you know, compared to
doing nothing, it's, it's about the same. But it doesn't mean that it's zero. And I, you know,
for me, just, just a life tip was like, don't go around your life thinking bad things are never
going to happen. Like sometimes they're going to happen and, and yeah. And I just, I, I, we,
we're trying to give information to hopefully give you a sense of like, give you more information.
So you have a sense of like more nuance with how you think about things. But what we really want
from you, at least what I want from you is I want you to walk around feeling like you can tackle
this and not be scared of everything. Like these things are very noble and they're very approachable.
So I, for me, knowledge is like that. It gives me much more freedom in the world. So there you go.
Well, that's a great segue too, is that if you are a person that would like to
to limit your food additives, a couple of ways to do that are cook more, eat more fresh foods,
less process. So cook everything from scratch is another way to do it. Or if you can't get the
fresh ones per se, frozen vegetables and fruits are also better than canned there. They've got
less preservatives in them. They've got less sodium in them. So they're going to be better.
Also crazy enough, they actually have more nutrient density. Yes, because they're not
processed as much. It's actually because they're frozen, because when things are colder, there's
less things to break them down. There you go. So I remember reading a paper about that. I thought
that was really interesting. That is very interesting. You might get rid of it when you microwave it or
cook it. Yeah, but oh well. Yeah, but you can just eat it frozen. So yeah. Oh gosh. And also to just
read the labels of your foods, so that you have a greater awareness of what's there, what you're
eating. Yeah. And we gave you all a lot of information today. We will post these notes
so that you can read through just in case you want in some of these names or when you're looking at
labels and you can figure out what their concentrations are and what's worth the risk and what's not.
Right. And so then to wrap things up, almost wrap things up. So what issues would we see with
pharmaceutical preservatives? Well, again, we want the medication to remain stable.
So we're going to be modifying things like temperature, humidity, the pH, oxidation,
storage conditions, and formulations as far as making sure that your product stays stable so
that you're getting the amount of medication that the label says you're getting. Some select
preservatives that we've seen issues with in the literature over the years are first of all,
alcohols. Alcohols are generally considered safe, but years ago it was determined that the alcohol,
benzyl alcohol is not recommended for use in parenteral products and in injectable products
in low birth weight infants because it can cause a fatal toxic syndrome in them. So that's for
sherbin proven so that you'll see no benzyl alcohol given to low birth weight infants.
Parabens, again, they're rearing their ugly head again in the pharmaceutical preservative issue.
They are not suitable for use in ophthalmic products and parenteral products because they
can cause irritation. So you'll not see those types of preservatives in those agents.
There is a preservative called EDTA. You may have heard those initials before.
The EDTA stands for ethylene diamine tetra acetic acid. And it's considered to have low toxicity,
but it has been put in nebulizer solutions which is used for people who have bronchoconstriction or
you're having trouble breathing, but it's caused some dose-related bronchoconstriction in those
nebulizer solutions. So it's counteracting what you're using the nebulizer solution for.
So it's been recommended to remove those things. And also it can cause kidney damage.
So if you're a patient with kidney problems, you would not want to use products that have EDTA in
them. And here's one that's been definitely controversial. It's called thimerosal. It's a
mercury-containing organic compound. And it's been widely used as an antimicrobial preservative
since the 1930s. It's been also seen in topical products like contact lens solutions.
And we've seen it. We have seen some hypersensitivity when it's been used in
eye drops and in vaccines. But the big deal with the thimerosal is because it has been included
in vaccines. And so this was interesting. I did read that when babies are born, they do get a lot
of vaccines. Vaccines have been reformulated a lot since I was a kid and got vaccines, even since
Josh was a kid and got vaccines. And so a lot of vaccines are single-use containers rather than
multiple-use containers. So a lot of them don't have preservatives in them anymore. But there were
some studies done with babies that had to get all that series of injections for vaccines and found
that with getting a lot of them, they could get a level of thimerosal that reached the Environmental
Protection Agency mercury levels that were not safe in their first six months of life, that it
exceeded those levels and stuff. But again, like I said, most vaccines have been reformulated so
that you don't have thimerosal in them. So even if you got one dose of a vaccine that did have
thimerosal in it, you're not going to be at risk because some of the other ones won't have it as
well. Yeah. I think that I can't remember the date, but I feel like that was back in the 90s
when they got reformulated. There's also a distinction between organic and inorganic mercury
compounds. Organic mercury compounds are things that you eat in fish. And then there's inorganic
mercury. And they get metabolized differently in your body. I mean, you could eat a lot of tuna
and you can get mercury poisoning. So really the dose makes the poison, which is why you want to
do the single dose vaccines that you limit the amount that you're getting. And like we said,
we've reformulated those vaccines. Some of them actually have thimerosal and some don't. And
we found a different way to preserve them over time. I don't know if the most recent mRNA,
I don't think it does have thimerosal in it because I won't see why it would.
I don't know. But again, especially if they're single use containers, they're going to have
less of a need for those preservatives because remember they're sterilized as well as then if
they need. And of course, let's end on a very controversial statement, but again, there have
been, you know, there was so much concern that vaccines, especially those that can contain thimerosal
contributed to the development of autism in children. And there's been a number of studies
and there's just been really no definitive association between those, the use of thimerosal
and the development of autism. And again, it's been looked at in a variety of ways. And so
thimerosal was not definitively scientifically linked to autism or any other neurodevelopmental
disorder. So I know that that is a sensitive topic and a sensitive subject to those that have kiddos
that have developed autism or another neurodevelopmental disorder and they got a vaccine. But I would
suggest that there was something else that was the underlying reason for that. So yeah,
so yeah, I'm not an autism expert, so I don't know how it comes about, but it's, yeah, I just,
it was looked at and looked at when people brought this topic up and there was just no association.
Well, it was, I mean, the paper was actually original by a guy named Andrew Wakefield,
actually here in Austin, Texas, who he was a, he was a physician who potentially just, it was just
an opinion piece of like, well, maybe this is what the link is. And then submitted some data that was
actually fabricated. And then the paper didn't, it was submitted, I think it was to the Lancet.
And then it was accepted. And then upon the pushback and looking at the actual data,
it had to be retracted. Well, it wasn't retracted till I think 2010 or 2014.
So as you know, in science, if something is just published in a reputable journal,
people are going to cite it and they're going to believe it. And obviously there is a movement of,
they're just, I don't really know how to explain it, but there's just a large movement against
vaccination. And I think a lot of people just, they found this as credible evidence towards it.
I mean, we could have a whole, I might just delete this part out, but I was like,
yeah, maybe so. Yeah, I'm just going to leave this part out. Yeah. So there we go. Yeah. Okay.
And one last point that we want to make is we always talk about a myth or misinformation
about our topic. And so we've actually kind of already kind of alluded to this, but that
natural preservatives are healthier than synthetic or manmade chemicals. And this not
necessary preservatives. And that's not necessarily true. Do you know that some of
the most toxic chemicals like Josh already mentioned, it come from nature and everything
that we have as a chemical, I mean, we're, we're made of chemicals and stuff. So,
so the presence of a chemical alone is not enough to create a potential risk to a person's health.
Both the natural and the synthetic preservatives are useful. It just depends on the circumstances.
Natural preservatives are a little bit harder to obtain. So it's going to make the cost of the
product go up if you're going to use that. And also you'll have less of it. So you just might not be
able to get it. So then we've got to preserve things to make our foods and our medications safe.
So you're going to see a probably a balance of both. So I think that we'll just continue to see
both use more often. So yeah, it just seems to be, it's a really interesting space. Like now I feel
like I go to the grocery store. I see things a little bit differently after this episode,
just the fact that there is so much food for such a long period of time is pretty amazing.
When you think about it. Yes, it is. Like from the beginning of the episode that mom talked about
a hundred years ago, you would essentially just go to your local farmer and they would just have
produce that you could buy probably at a farmer's market. Yes, maybe. And now you were, everybody's
growing their own or maybe you shared it with your neighbor, you know, maybe, you know, I mean,
just knowing like what original cities, I mean, obviously people would bring their stuff in and
sell them at markets. But regardless, you could only grow what was available in your region.
And so the fact that we're able to get so many things from so many different parts of the world
is really cool. I view that as a part of a place to bringing people together and bringing cultures
together that would have never been able to interact. So I think this technology is really
amazing that you can, you can cook a pizza one night and then pad Thai another night and have
some avocado toasts in the morning. And that's all possible thanks to this technology and hopefully
keeping you safe as well. So, well, thank you so much. This was a really good discussion.
I agree. We hope that you learned a lot. And if you ever have any questions for us,
please drop us a line. But until next time, my name is Josh Klaus and I'm Jenny Seltzer.
And this has been another episode of Your Mom on Drugs. Bye. Bye.