No Preservatives BHT, BHA, TBHQ

Have you checked the ingredients for packaged foods in your pantry?  It seems that nearly all of them include a preservative.  Preserving the freshness of your food doesn't sound like a bad thing, but the synthetic organic chemicals (such as BHT, BHA, or TBHQ) used as preservatives are often shown to be harmful to your body.  When adequate toxicological studies have been completed an acceptable daily intake (ADI) is established for a food additive.

Triple E Agent Assignment:
Discuss common food preservatives, and do some simple calculations to understand if a common dietary item puts your health at risk...

It is incredibly hard to eat a preservative free diet, but should you consider it?

Anti-oxidants, such as butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT), are generally used to give food a longer shelf-life.  BHT is one of those preservatives that has an established ADI, and it happens to be 0.3 mg per kg per day.  In other words, adverse health effects are expected if you consume more than 0.3 milligrams of BHT per day for each kilogram of your body weight (see warnings here).  For a 175 lb (79.5 kg) person that equates to 2.39 mg BHT per day.

Wait a minute !?&!, Triple E was eating a typical serving size (3/4 cup or 96,000 mg) of breakfast cereal each day.  Practically every cereal has BHT - but how much would be too much?  The ingredients are listed from most abundant (first) to least abundant (less), and minor ingredients are sometimes listed this way 'contains less than 2% of the following ingredients:'  A 175 lb person would eat enough cereal to exceed the ADI, if BHT were only 0.0025% by weight!!  That cannot be correct? please someone prove Triple E wrong.

Other food additives may have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) without completely documenting their toxicological effects.  Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) is commonly used as a substitute for BHT, but Triple E hasn't yet found an ADI for this preservative.  However, it has been shown to cause cancer in animal tests.  Another one that is prevalent is tertiary butylhydroquinone (TBHQ) as you can see from the popcorn ingredient list in the image.  This one also should be avoided.

Unfortunately Triple E does not have the data to do the math for BHA or TBHQ, but common sense suggests that zero tolerance is the better choice until data becomes available.

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Triple E.