— September 28, 2026 · Eight Common Food Preservatives Linked to High Blood Pressure: What the 112,000-Person French Study Actually Found

Table of Contents

1. The Study at a Glance
2. What the Researchers Actually Measured
3. The Eight Preservatives and Their Numbers
4. Where the Exposure Comes From
5. Where the Headline Overreaches
6. How a Preservative Could Raise Blood Pressure
7. The Limits: What a Cohort Study Cannot Tell You
8. How It Fits With Earlier NutriNet-Santé Findings
9. What the Regulators Say
10. What This Means for You
11. Sources and Primary Documents
12. Key Research Papers
13. Connections
14. Featured Videos

The Study at a Glance

• Paper: Hasenböhler A, Javaux G, Payen de la Garanderie M and 17 co-authors, senior author Mathilde Touvier. “Preservative food additives, hypertension, and cardiovascular diseases: the NutriNet-Santé study.” European Heart Journal, online May 20, 2026 (doi:10.1093/eurheartj/ehag308).
• Who: the Nutritional Epidemiology Research Team at Université Sorbonne Paris Nord and Université Paris Cité (INSERM, INRAE, CNAM), with collaborators at the International Agency for Research on Cancer and the Institut Pasteur. Publicly funded, including a European Research Council grant; no industry support declared.
• Design: prospective population-based cohort; volunteers enrolled online from 2009 and followed to December 31, 2024. Nobody was given anything; the researchers observed what people ate and what happened to them.
• Size: 112,395 participants, 78.7% women, mean age 42.8. After removing people who already had the condition in question: 110,356 analysed for cardiovascular disease, 103,386 for hypertension.
• Follow-up and outcomes: median 7.9 years for cardiovascular disease (870,898 person-years) and 7.6 for hypertension (784,955); 5,544 new diagnoses of hypertension and 2,450 first cardiovascular events (1,142 cerebrovascular, 1,308 coronary; 33 fatal).
• Exposure: 58 preservative additives detected; 17 consumed by at least 10% of participants and examined individually.
• Primary result (highest third of intake versus lowest): total non-antioxidant preservatives — hypertension hazard ratio (HR) 1.29 (95% confidence interval 1.20–1.39), cardiovascular disease 1.16 (1.04–1.29), coronary heart disease 1.26 (1.10–1.46); total antioxidant preservatives — hypertension 1.22 (1.13–1.31); all preservatives combined — hypertension 1.24 (1.16–1.34).
• Individual preservatives associated with hypertension after multiple-test correction: potassium sorbate (E202), potassium metabisulphite (E224), sodium nitrite (E250), ascorbic acid (E300), sodium ascorbate (E301), sodium erythorbate (E316), citric acid (E330), extracts of rosemary (E392). Ascorbic acid was also associated with cardiovascular disease.
• No inverse associations: no preservative was linked to a lower risk of anything.

A hazard ratio is the rate of an event in one group divided by the rate in a comparison group: 1.29 means new hypertension diagnoses accumulated 29% faster among the highest consumers. The 95% confidence interval is the range compatible with the data; when it excludes 1.00 the result is conventionally called statistically significant.

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What the Researchers Actually Measured

The reason this cohort can ask about additives at all, when almost no other can, is how it records food: every six months, three 24-hour dietary records on randomly assigned days, through a validated web interface that asks for the brand of every industrial product (median 18 records per person; maximum 96). Two brands of the same sliced ham can contain quite different preservatives, and a food-frequency questionnaire cannot see the difference.

Those records were merged with three composition databases (among them the crowd-sourced Open Food Facts), matching each consumption to the closest composition record in time to allow for reformulation. Doses came from laboratory assays the team commissioned on real foods and from industry use-level data obtained from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) under a public-access-to-documents request, giving an estimated daily intake of each of 58 preservatives per participant, updated every two years.

Two definitions matter. “Preservative” here covers both preservatives proper (the E200s, which stop micro-organisms) and antioxidants (the E300s, which stop rancidity and browning). And several of these substances occur naturally — citric acid in lemons, ascorbic acid in fruit, nitrates in leafy greens — so natural intake was quantified separately and adjusted for. On average the additive source accounted for 16% of citric acid intake, 29% of ascorbate intake and 63% of sulphite intake.

Diagnoses were validated by a physician committee from medical records, and the cohort is linked to the national health-insurance database and the national mortality registry. Hypertension means a diagnosis or treatment recorded during follow-up in someone who did not have it at entry.

The statistics were Cox proportional-hazards models with age as the time scale, comparing sex-specific thirds of intake, adjusted for sex, height, body mass index, physical activity, smoking, education, family history, number of dietary records, and daily intakes of energy, alcohol, saturated fat, sodium, fibre, sugars, fruit and vegetables, dairy, and red and processed meat. A sensitivity analysis added the ultra-processed share of the diet (NOVA classification); the authors report the associations held.

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The Eight Preservatives and Their Numbers

Hazard ratios for new hypertension, highest versus lowest consumers. All survived false-discovery-rate correction, the standard adjustment for having tested 17 substances at once.

Non-antioxidant preservatives (stop microbes)

• Potassium sorbate (E202) — HR 1.39 (1.28–1.50), the strongest single association in the paper; the sorbate family (E200–E203) matched it at 1.39 (1.29–1.49). Consumed by 65%. Sorbic acid is chemically a short trans-fatty acid, which the authors flag as possibly relevant.
• Potassium metabisulphite (E224) — HR 1.16 (1.08–1.25); sulphites as a family (E220–E228) 1.11 (1.02–1.22). Consumed by 44% (any sulphite: 84%), overwhelmingly from wine in this French cohort.
• Sodium nitrite (E250) — HR 1.16 (1.08–1.25). Consumed by 73%, over half from processed meat, where it fixes the pink colour and blocks Clostridium botulinum. Nitrates (E251–E252) showed no association with anything.

Antioxidant preservatives (stop oxidation)

• Ascorbic acid (E300) — hypertension HR 1.14 (1.06–1.22) and cardiovascular disease HR 1.15 (1.04–1.28; corrected P = 0.05, exactly at the threshold). This is vitamin C, added to processed fruit products, juices, cured meats and flour. Consumed by 83%. The most counter-intuitive result in the paper; see the mechanisms section.
• Sodium ascorbate (E301) — HR 1.12 (1.04–1.20). Consumed by 50%; common in cured meats alongside nitrite.
• Sodium erythorbate (E316) — HR 1.14 (1.06–1.22). A mirror-image isomer of ascorbic acid with almost no vitamin activity; 42% of intake from processed meat. Consumed by 53%.
• Citric acid (E330) — HR 1.25 (1.16–1.34). The most widely consumed additive in the study (91%) and by far the largest by weight: citrates averaged 322 mg a day per person against 54 mg for all non-antioxidant preservatives combined.
• Extracts of rosemary (E392) — HR 1.10 (1.02–1.18). A “clean-label” antioxidant standardised for carnosic acid and carnosol. Consumed by 22%. The weakest of the eight, and the only one whose E-value (how strong an unmeasured confounder would need to be to explain it away) fell below 1.5, at 1.43.

What was not associated, and a sense of scale

Nitrates, tocopherols (vitamin E), lecithins, acetates, benzoates and the other tested substances did not reach significance after correction.

The paper reports hazard ratios, not absolute rates by tertile. For scale, our own arithmetic on the crude figures: 5,544 diagnoses among 103,386 people is about 5.4 new hypertension cases per 100 participants over a median 7.6 years, so a 29% relative increase would mean roughly 1.5 extra diagnoses per 100 people over that period; for cardiovascular disease (2,450 among 110,356, about 2.2 per 100), 16% more is roughly a third of one extra event per 100. These are illustrations, and this is a young cohort: the same relative increase in an older population would translate into more absolute cases.

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Where the Exposure Comes From

In this cohort alcoholic drinks supplied 84% of sulphites; processed meat supplied 54% of nitrites, 77% of nitrates and 42% of erythorbates; processed fruit and vegetable products supplied 51% of ascorbates and 26% of citrates; and sorbates and citric acid were spread across soft drinks, sweets, sauces, dairy desserts and baked goods, which is why the authors call most preservatives ubiquitous rather than tied to one food.

The highest third of preservative consumers were younger (mean 39 versus 46), less physically active, and had less family history of hypertension; they ate more sugar (104 g a day versus 83 g), more sodium (2,851 mg versus 2,590 mg), more red and processed meat, and a much larger share of ultra-processed food (21% of food weight versus 14%). All of those were adjusted for; whether the adjustment was complete is the central question, taken up under limits.

Against Europe’s acceptable daily intakes (ADIs) the cohort mostly stayed within bounds: nobody exceeded the ADI for sorbates, erythorbates or nitrates, though 96 participants exceeded the sulphite ADI and 54 the nitrite ADI. The associations appear at intakes regulators currently classify as acceptable.

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Where the Headline Overreaches

The headline — “8 common food additives linked to high blood pressure and heart disease” — is accurate about the count and honest about “linked,” but it compresses three distinctions the paper keeps separate.

First, the study is about preservatives, not food additives in general. Emulsifiers, colours, sweeteners and thickeners were not examined; this paper says nothing about xanthan gum or aspartame.

Second, the eight were linked to high blood pressure; only one was linked to heart disease. Ascorbic acid alone also reached significance for cardiovascular disease, with a corrected P-value exactly at 0.05. The heart-disease signal is carried by the total of non-antioxidant preservatives, a summed exposure.

Third, “linked” is doing all the work it always does. The press release says so itself — the study “cannot prove they were directly responsible.” The authors estimate that 16% of the association between non-antioxidant preservatives and cardiovascular disease ran through raised blood pressure and about 5% through type 2 diabetes, which is plausible if causal and equally plausible if all three share a confounder.

None of this makes the finding unimportant: a first-of-its-kind cohort with brand-level exposure data and a consistent direction across eight substances is a legitimate reason to ask regulators to look again, which is what the authors ask. It is not a reason to believe that the sorbate in a bottle of dressing is, by itself, raising your blood pressure.

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How a Preservative Could Raise Blood Pressure

The authors are candid that mechanism is the weakest link: nearly all supporting evidence is from cells in a dish or rodents, often at doses above what a person consumes. What they assemble:

Sorbates. Sorbic acid is a short trans-unsaturated fatty acid; industrial trans fats are established as harmful to blood pressure, and the authors suggest the configuration may matter, while acknowledging that a six-carbon acid is not an eighteen-carbon one. In cell models potassium sorbate has shown cytotoxicity and activation of advanced glycation end-products, the sugar-protein compounds that stiffen arteries.

Nitrites. Nitrites can promote oxidative damage, and the N-nitroso compounds formed in curing are associated with insulin resistance, which raises blood pressure. The absence of any association for nitrates, which occur mostly in vegetables and become nitric oxide, a vasodilator, fits the picture that dietary nitrate is neutral-to-beneficial while additive nitrite is not.

Ascorbic acid and erythorbates — the vitamin C paradox. Vitamin C from fruit and vegetables is consistently associated with lower cardiovascular risk, yet added ascorbic acid, chemically identical, was associated with more hypertension and cardiovascular disease here, while added tocopherols were not. The authors offer three readings: the food matrix matters (vitamin C in an orange arrives with fibre, potassium and polyphenols; as E300 it arrives in a processed product); dose and interactions change bioavailability; and supplementation trials of vitamin C have found no cardiovascular benefit. A sceptic will add a fourth: added ascorbic acid is an excellent marker of processed fruit products and cured meats. Sodium erythorbate, the isomer with no vitamin activity, behaves almost identically in the data, which fits either reading.

The pancreas and the microbiome. Several of these compounds disturb insulin secretion or action in experimental systems, and the same group has just reported in Nature Communications that twelve of the same preservatives are associated with new type 2 diabetes in this cohort. The second route is the gut: preservatives are by definition substances that inhibit micro-organisms, and the group’s Institut Pasteur collaborator, Benoit Chassaing, showed in 2015 that dietary emulsifiers alter the mouse microbiota and drive low-grade inflammation and metabolic syndrome. Whether sorbates or sulphites do the same at food doses in humans is not known.

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The Limits: What a Cohort Study Cannot Tell You

It is observational. The paper’s first stated limitation is that the design “precludes causal inference based on this study alone, and residual confounding cannot be entirely ruled out.” No randomised trial of feeding people sodium nitrite for eight years will ever be run, so cohort evidence is what there will be.

Confounding by ultra-processed food. Preservatives travel almost exclusively in industrially processed products, and the same cohort showed in 2019 that each 10-percentage-point increase in the ultra-processed share of the diet predicts a 12% higher rate of cardiovascular disease. Everything else in those products — sugar, salt, refined starch, packaging chemicals, displaced whole foods, the habits of the person eating them — is a candidate explanation. The authors’ defence: the model adjusts for the major nutrients and food groups; adding the ultra-processed share did not remove the associations; and different members of the same class gave different results (nitrites yes, nitrates no; ascorbates yes, tocopherols no). A reasonable defence, not a proof: adjusting for a variable measured with error removes only part of its influence.

The healthy-volunteer problem. Participants were mostly women, better educated and healthier than the French population, and only 5% developed hypertension during follow-up against roughly 30% prevalence in France, largely because the cohort is young. Undiagnosed hypertension could not be excluded, though the authors argue that such misclassification would more likely dilute associations than create them, and the expected associations for sodium (HR 1.13) and smoking did appear.

Exposure measurement. Doses were often inferred from typical use levels rather than measured in the item eaten, and there are no biomarkers for most preservatives, so no biological validation was possible.

Multiple testing and small effects. The authors applied false-discovery-rate correction, ran a negative-control outcome (hip fracture, where no preservative should matter, and none did), and computed E-values, all 1.5 or above except rosemary extract. An E-value of 1.5 means an unmeasured confounder associated with both exposure and outcome by a factor of 1.5 could fully explain the result — not a high bar when ultra-processed food intake tracks preservative intake far more tightly than that. Hazard ratios of 1.10–1.16 are the size at which epidemiology is least reliable; the sorbate (1.39) and citric acid (1.25) associations are larger and harder to dismiss.

One cohort, one group. Every paper in this series comes from one cohort, one food database and one analytic tradition; a systematic bias in how it measures diet or selects volunteers would reproduce itself in every paper. Independent replication in a cohort with comparable brand-level data does not yet exist, mainly because no other cohort has collected such data. The paper says so.

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How It Fits With Earlier NutriNet-Santé Findings

Since 2019 the group has examined one class of additive after another in the same cohort:

• Ultra-processed food and cardiovascular disease (Srour et al., BMJ 2019). Each 10-percentage-point increase in the ultra-processed share of the diet was associated with a 12% higher rate of cardiovascular disease (HR 1.12, 1.05–1.20). The authors listed additives among the candidate explanations and set out to test them one class at a time.
• Artificial sweeteners and cardiovascular disease (Debras et al., BMJ 2022). HR 1.09 (1.01–1.18) for cardiovascular disease and 1.18 for cerebrovascular disease; absolute rates 346 versus 314 events per 100,000 person-years in higher consumers versus non-consumers.
• Emulsifiers and cardiovascular disease (Sellem et al., BMJ 2023). Celluloses (E460–E468) and mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids (E471–E472) were associated with higher rates of cardiovascular and coronary disease, hazard ratios per standard deviation 1.03 to 1.11 — the same modest size seen here.
• Additive mixtures and type 2 diabetes (Payen de la Garanderie et al., PLOS Medicine 2025). Two of the five combinations people actually consume together were associated with higher diabetes incidence; one was dominated by citric acid, sodium citrates, phosphoric acid, caramel colour and artificial sweeteners — essentially the soft-drink mixture.
• Preservatives and type 2 diabetes (Hasenböhler et al., Nature Communications 2026). The direct companion, from the same first author: of the same 17 preservatives, twelve were associated with new type 2 diabetes after correction, including seven of the eight named here.

The consistency is the strongest argument for taking the programme seriously — the substances that mark industrial processing keep landing on the wrong side of the ledger, and within each class some members are implicated and others are not — and, for the reason given under limits, also the strongest argument for caution.

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What the Regulators Say

Europe: EFSA’s rolling re-evaluations

Every additive authorised in the EU before 2009 has been re-evaluated by EFSA’s panels, 25 of them preservatives in the past decade. Where the eight stand:

• Sorbates (E200, E202): a temporary group ADI in 2015; in 2019, after reviewing a new reproductive-toxicity study, a group ADI of 11 mg sorbic acid per kg body weight per day. No participant came near it.
• Sulphites (E220–E228, including E224): the most troubled file. A temporary ADI of 0.7 mg sulphur dioxide equivalent per kg was set in 2016; in 2022 the panel found the toxicity database inadequate to derive any ADI, withdrew it, moved to a margin-of-exposure approach based on a neurological endpoint, and found the margins for high consumers “raise a safety concern.”
• Sodium nitrite (E250): re-evaluated in 2017 with an ADI of 0.07 mg nitrite ion per kg, based on methaemoglobin formation; the panel also noted epidemiological evidence linking dietary nitrite to gastric cancer and nitrite-plus-nitrate from processed meat to colorectal cancer. Fifty-four people in the present cohort exceeded this ADI.
• Ascorbates (E300, E301) and erythorbates (E315, E316) were re-evaluated in 2015 and 2016 respectively. Extracts of rosemary (E392): a 2018 exposure assessment found even high-consuming children well under the temporary ADI of 0.3 mg per kg (as carnosic acid plus carnosol) set by the joint FAO/WHO expert committee. Citric acid (E330): we could not locate a completed EFSA re-evaluation.

None of these evaluations asked about blood pressure or cardiovascular outcomes; ADIs come from animal toxicology on endpoints such as reproduction and methaemoglobin. And the preservatives do real work — sodium nitrite is why cured meat does not cause botulism — so any re-evaluation is a trade-off, not a subtraction.

United States: the GRAS proposal

In the United States most of these substances are on the market under the “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) provision, under which a company may determine an ingredient’s safety itself and notify the FDA only voluntarily. On August 11, 2026 the FDA published a proposed rule (Docket FDA-2025-N-3262) that would make notification mandatory for new GRAS determinations; comments close December 9, 2026. We covered it on August 10. It does not reopen the files of long-established ingredients and would not on its own trigger the re-evaluation the French authors are asking for.

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What This Means for You

The authors’ own conclusion is the right starting point: these findings “do not call into question food-based dietary guidelines” but complement them. The advice that reliably lowers blood pressure — more vegetables, fruit, legumes and whole grains, less salt, less processed meat, less alcohol — is unchanged, and it lowers preservative intake as a side effect. The one addition: where you can choose between a fresh or minimally processed version of a food and an industrial one, prefer the former.

Reading a label

In the EU and UK preservatives appear by E-number or name; in the United States by name only:

• Sorbates — sorbic acid, potassium sorbate, calcium sorbate (E200–E203). Soft drinks, dressings, sauces, cheese, dried fruit, wine, baked goods.
• Sulphites — sulphur dioxide, sodium or potassium (meta)bisulphite (E220–E228); look for “contains sulphites.” Wine, beer, cider, dried fruit, processed potatoes.
• Nitrites — sodium nitrite, potassium nitrite (E249–E250). Bacon, ham, salami, hot dogs, deli meat. “Uncured” products cured with celery powder deliver nitrite too.
• Ascorbates and erythorbates — ascorbic acid, sodium ascorbate, erythorbic acid, sodium erythorbate (E300–E301, E315–E316). Cured meats, juices, processed fruit, bread improvers.
• Citric acid (E330) — almost everything acidic, sweet or fruit-flavoured that comes in a package.
• Rosemary extract (E392, often “extracts of rosemary” or “rosemary extract (antioxidant)”) — oils, crisps and snacks, sausages, sauces.

These cluster: deli ham carries nitrite plus ascorbate or erythorbate; a soft drink carries citric acid plus sorbate. Cutting the product cuts the cluster, which is why food-level advice beats additive-by-additive vigilance.

Whole-food substitutions that remove the cluster

• Cured and deli meat → freshly cooked meat, poultry or fish sliced at home; eggs; canned fish. This one swap removes most nitrite and erythorbate exposure, and it is the highest-yield change in this cohort’s data.
• Soft drinks and fruit drinks → water, sparkling water with lemon, unsweetened tea. Removes citric acid, sorbate and, in diet versions, the sweeteners the same cohort has separately flagged; the second-highest-yield change.
• Fruit preparations, juices, flavoured yogurt → whole fruit; plain whole-milk yogurt with fruit added at the table. Whole fruit delivers vitamin C in the matrix the evidence actually favours.
• Packaged bread and baked goods → bread from a bakery that bakes daily, or home-baked; brown rice, oats and other intact whole grains as staples.
• Wine → mostly a question of how much you drink; alcohol raises blood pressure on its own by a mechanism that dwarfs anything attributable to its sulphites.

Two points of perspective. Do not be afraid of vitamin C: the paper is about ascorbic acid added to processed products, and oranges, peppers and broccoli are consistently associated with lower blood pressure. And if you already have high blood pressure, this changes nothing about your treatment; use the food advice as an addition, not an alternative.

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Sources and Primary Documents

1. Hasenböhler A, Javaux G, Payen de la Garanderie M, Szabo de Edelenyi F, Yvroud-Hoyos P, Agaësse C, De Sa A, Huybrechts I, Pierre F, Coumoul X, Fezeu LK, Galan P, Blacher J, Julia C, Allès B, Hercberg S, Chassaing B, Deschasaux-Tanguy M, Srour B, Touvier M (2026). Preservative food additives, hypertension, and cardiovascular diseases: the NutriNet-Santé study. European Heart Journal. — doi:10.1093/eurheartj/ehag308
2. The same paper on PubMed (online ahead of print, May 20, 2026). — PubMed PMID: 42161430
3. Open-access author manuscript, HAL open archive (INRAE), record hal-05630247. hal.inrae.fr/hal-05630247
4. European Society of Cardiology, via ScienceDaily. 8 common food additives linked to high blood pressure and heart disease. September 20, 2026. sciencedaily.com
5. NutriNet-Santé cohort registration, ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03335644. clinicaltrials.gov · Study website: etude-nutrinet-sante.fr
6. EFSA Panel on Food Additives and Flavourings; Younes M, Aquilina G, et al. (2022). Follow-up of the re-evaluation of sulfur dioxide (E 220), sodium sulfite (E 221), sodium bisulfite (E 222), sodium metabisulfite (E 223), potassium metabisulfite (E 224), calcium sulfite (E 226), calcium bisulfite (E 227) and potassium bisulfite (E 228). EFSA Journal. — doi:10.2903/j.efsa.2022.7594
7. EFSA Panel on Food Additives and Nutrient Sources added to Food; Mortensen A, Aguilar F, et al. (2017). Re-evaluation of potassium nitrite (E 249) and sodium nitrite (E 250) as food additives. EFSA Journal. — doi:10.2903/j.efsa.2017.4786
8. EFSA Panel on Food Additives and Flavourings (2019). Opinion on the follow-up of the re-evaluation of sorbic acid (E200) and potassium sorbate (E202) as food additives. EFSA Journal. — doi:10.2903/j.efsa.2019.5625
9. EFSA Panel on Food Additives and Nutrient Sources added to Food; Younes M, Aggett P, et al. (2018). Refined exposure assessment of extracts of rosemary (E 392) from its use as food additive. EFSA Journal. — doi:10.2903/j.efsa.2018.5373
10. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Substances Generally Recognized as Safe. Proposed rule, Docket No. FDA-2025-N-3262, published August 11, 2026; comments close December 9, 2026. federalregister.gov/d/2026-16296

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Key Research Papers

The background literature: the earlier NutriNet-Santé additive papers this study builds on, its companion diabetes paper, and the experimental work behind the microbiome hypothesis.

1. Srour B, Fezeu LK, Kesse-Guyot E, et al. (2019). Ultra-processed food intake and risk of cardiovascular disease: prospective cohort study (NutriNet-Santé). BMJ. — doi:10.1136/bmj.l1451
2. Debras C, Chazelas E, Sellem L, et al. (2022). Artificial sweeteners and risk of cardiovascular diseases: results from the prospective NutriNet-Santé cohort. BMJ. — doi:10.1136/bmj-2022-071204
3. Sellem L, Srour B, Javaux G, et al. (2023). Food additive emulsifiers and risk of cardiovascular disease in the NutriNet-Santé cohort: prospective cohort study. BMJ. — doi:10.1136/bmj-2023-076058
4. Srour B, Chazelas E, Druesne-Pecollo N, et al. (2023). Dietary exposure to nitrites and nitrates in association with type 2 diabetes risk: Results from the NutriNet-Santé population-based cohort study. PLOS Medicine. — doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1004149
5. Salame C, Javaux G, Sellem L, et al. (2024). Food additive emulsifiers and the risk of type 2 diabetes: analysis of data from the NutriNet-Santé prospective cohort study. The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology. — doi:10.1016/S2213-8587(24)00086-X
6. Payen de la Garanderie M, Hasenbohler A, Dechamp N, et al. (2025). Food additive mixtures and type 2 diabetes incidence: Results from the NutriNet-Santé prospective cohort. PLOS Medicine. — doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1004570
7. Hasenböhler A, Javaux G, Payen de la Garanderie M, et al. (2026). Associations between preservative food additives and type 2 diabetes incidence in the NutriNet-Santé prospective cohort. Nature Communications. — doi:10.1038/s41467-025-67360-w
8. Chassaing B, Koren O, Goodrich JK, et al. (2015). Dietary emulsifiers impact the mouse gut microbiota promoting colitis and metabolic syndrome. Nature. — doi:10.1038/nature14232

PubMed Topic Searches

1. PubMed: NutriNet-Santé food additives

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Connections

• News Archive
• Food Preservatives — the classes and what they do
• Food Additives — what is really in packaged food
• Ultra-Processed Foods — the confounder at the heart of this study
• Nitrates and Nitrites — why additive nitrite and vegetable nitrate behave differently
• Artificial Sweeteners — the same cohort’s 2022 cardiovascular finding
• Fake Food — industrial imitations
• Hypertension — causes and the dietary approach that works
• Cardiovascular Disease — the outcomes counted in this study
• Vitamin C — the same molecule as E300, in its natural matrix
• The GRAS Loophole — our August article on the FDA’s proposed rule

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