Adverse effects of chemical preservatives: A review

Abstract

Food preservatives are chemical or natural substances that are added to the food products which will help to increase the shelf life and also inhibits the growth of microorganisms that causes food spoilage. The objective of review is to know and understand the adverse effects of chemical preservative in food products. Even though the chemical preservative used is approved by the FDA, whereas the long-term usage of some preservatives can causedifferent health problems in humans including cancer. This review is also intended to understand how the preservative induce different health problem in the body if consumed for long term. It is not possible to review all the preservatives hence, mainly focused on sodium sulphite, sodium nitrite, sodium benzoate, Tertiary butylhydroquinoe (tBHQ) and Butylated hydroxylanisole (BHA) which are commonly used food preservatives in beverages, dried foodproducts, meat and other processed food. The long-term consumption of the food which is treated with the above-mentioned food preservatives showed signs of carcinogenicity, genotoxicity and other allergies. In future the usage of natural food preservative which is derived from plants and other natural sources can make a drastic change in growing health problems using chemical preservatives.