At the Food Babe web site by Vana Hari there is an article on August 2, 2024 titled The insane ingredients in lemonade + Homemade Lemonade Recipe. She is not too sane either, and there is a webpage about her on August 15, 2016 at the Encyclopedia of American Loons. And there also is a webpage about her at RationalWiki. Vana has been telling us nonsense for over a decade. There is an article by David Gorski at Science-Based Medicine on December 8, 2014 titled Vani Hari, a.k.a. “The Food Babe,” finally responds to critics which begins:
“It’s no secret that we here at Science-Based Medicine (and any scientists and skeptics with a knowledge of basic chemistry and biology) have been very critical of Vana Hari, better known to her fans as The Food Babe. The reasons for our criticisms of her are legion. Basically, she is a seemingly-never-ending font of misinformation and fear mongering about food ingredients, particularly any ingredient with a scary, ‘chemically’ – sounding name.”
Vana Hari’s lemonade article has a statement in red about a preservative used in commercial lemonades:
“When Sodium Benzoate is mixed with Vitamin C, it can produce BENZENE, a known carcinogen.”
Her site has a web page tiled Ingredients to Avoid in Processed Food containing the following explanation:
Sodium Benzoate (E211) or Potassium Benzoate (E212)
What it is: Synthetic preservatives.
Why to avoid: When combined with either ascorbic acid (vitamin C) or erythorbic acid it produces benzene, a known carcinogen.
Commonly found in: Soft drinks, pickles, syrups, sauces, salad dressing.
But there is an article by Joe Schwarcz at the McGill Office for Science and Society on February 15, 2017 titled Chemistry lesson for The Food Babe … and everyone else #7: the difference between hazard and risk. Joe begins by saying:
“We know that Ms. Food Babe’s scientific knowledge is negligible. Especially when it comes to understanding the difference between hazard and risk. This is important especially when it come[s] to understanding the International Agency for Research on Cancer’s listing of chemicals as being carcinogenic. This list is based on hazard, not risk. Hazard can be defined as a potential source of harm or of some adverse health effect. Risk is the likelihood that exposure to a hazard causes harm or some adverse effect. If a substance is placed in IARC’s Group 1, it means that there is strong evidence that the substance can cause cancer, but it says nothing about how likely it is to do so. That likelihood depends on several factors including innate carcinogenicity, extent of exposure and personal liability.”
At PubMed Central I found an article by Lucia Justyna Walczak-Nowicka and Mariola Herbet in the Nutrients magazine in 2022 (Volume 14, Number 7) titled Sodium Benzoate – Harmfulness and Potential Use on Therapies for Disorders Related to the Nervous System: A Review. Their seventeenth reference is another article from 2017 by J. D.Piper and P. W. Piper in Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety for 2017, Volume 16, pages 868 to 880 titled Benzoate and Sorbate Salts: A Systematic Review of the Potential Hazards of These Invaluable Preservatives and the Expanding Spectrum of Clinical Uses for Sodium Benzoate. There is a section titled The potential of benzoate to undergo decarboxylation, thereby generating benzene with the following discussion:
“Certain beverages containing benzoate salts and ascorbic or erythorbic acids have been found to contain low (ng/g) levels of the carcinogen benzene (Gardner and Lawrence 1993). This benzene is thought to form during storage through decarboxylation of the=benzoate by hydroxyl radicals. Elevated temperatures and ultraviolet light can accelerate, while sugar and metal ion-chelating agents can inhibit, such hydroxyl radical formation catalyzed by trace levels of metal ions.
Since the 1990s, food safety organizations have conducted surveys to determine the levels of benzene in retail beverages. Many companies have, in turn, responded to this benzene problem by reformulating those products that were found to contain benzene, substituting PS for the SB in soft drinks or - where possible - eliminating the preservative altogether. There may be additional benefits of this use of sorbate, as compared to benzoate, notably a prevention of the allergic response or altered cognitive function effects of benzoate described in more detail later in this article. A few cases of children having benzoate allergy were recently confirmed (Jacob and others 2016), while benzoate has been cited as a food additive that might be a contributory factor to hyperactivity in children (Eigenmann and Haenggeli 2007). However, the usage of benzoate in cosmetics does appear to be on the increase (Jacob and others 2016).
It is important to see this benzene contamination in perspective. Benzene can occur naturally in small amounts in a number of fruits, including mangoes, cranberries, prunes, greengages, and cloudberries, as well as fruit juices with naturally occurring benzoic and ascorbic acids. Second, our major exposure to benzene is from the atmosphere. On average, most people inhale 220 μg benzene every day from exhaust emissions, whereas cigarette smokers may be exposed to up to 7900 μg/d (Lindner and others 2011; Falzone and others 2016). While, as described below, benzene is potentially very harmful, it is improbable that the low levels of benzene in soft drinks are leading to any appreciable increase in benzene exposure for most individuals.”
The U. S. Food and Drug Administration has a web page with results from before 2007 titled Questions and Answers on the Occurrence of Benzene in Soft Drinks and Other Beverages which found:
“The results of CFSAN's survey indicate that the levels of benzene found in beverages to date do not pose a safety concern for consumers. Almost all samples analyzed in our survey contained either no benzene or levels below 5 ppb. .… FDA also found benzene above 5 ppb in one cranberry juice beverage with added ascorbic acid but no added benzoates (cranberries contain natural benzoates).”
The image with a glass jar of lemonade came from HarshLight at Wikimedia Commons.
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