Emulsifiers Make Food More Appealing. Do They Also Make You Sick?Emerging research suggests there might be a link between the texture-tweaking agents and health risksBy Andrea Petersen March 3, 2025 10:00 am ET
Emulsifiers can be found in a range of foods, from ice cream to whole grain crackers.
They keep salad dressing from separating, ice cream from dripping and muffins from hardening.
Emulsifiers, used to improve the texture of food, are in all sorts of products. But there is growing concern about the potential health risks from eating them.
Recent studies have found that consuming common emulsifiers is linked to a higher risk of heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and some cancers. Other research seems to show why: The substances change the gut microbiome in a way that can cause inflammation.
Emulsifiers may partly explain why diets high in ultra-processed foods are associated with health problems. Ultra-processed foods, which include everything from energy bars and chips to deli meat and many soups, are facing increased scrutiny by the Trump administration. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the new head of the Department of Health and Human Services, has said that the Food and Drug Administration will investigate food additives. Kennedy has often blamed the substances for chronic diseases in the U.S.
The new research on emulsifiers is upending what scientists thought they knew about them. Many common emulsifiers were considered safe because they aren’t readily absorbed by the body. But now researchers understand that this very quality enables emulsifiers to disrupt the microbiome.
Emulsifiers are harder to avoid than some other food additives, like artificial sweeteners and colors, because they are difficult to taste and see and their use is so widespread. The ingredients are cheap and increase stability and shelf life.
“They make the food taste exactly the same every time,” said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and director of the Food is Medicine Institute at Tufts University.
Emulsifiers are commonly found in junk food, but they are also used in foods that have a healthy image—like some yogurts, whole grain crackers and breakfast cereals, said Mathilde Touvier, research director at the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in France. In one study by Touvier and colleagues, researchers analyzed the ingredients in 126,000 packaged food and drink products available in France: Emulsifiers were in about 54% of them.
The food industry defends their use. “Emulsifiers and thickening agents play an important role in improving food texture and consistency, and have been studied by the FDA through a rigorous scientific and risk-based process,” said Sarah Gallo, senior vice president of product policy at the Consumer Brands Association, a trade group that includes many food makers.
There are dozens of different emulsifiers and thickeners. Some, like carboxymethylcellulose and polysorbate 80, are synthetic. Others, like soy lecithin and guar gum, are derived from natural sources.
Emulsifiers increase the stability and shelf life of many foods.
What the science says
People who have higher intakes of several common emulsifiers are more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer, according to three recent studies by Touvier and colleagues. The studies, which followed about 92,000 to 104,000 people over approximately seven years, controlled for a variety of factors, including age, body-mass index and family medical history.
The research, because it is what’s known as observational, doesn’t prove that emulsifiers are causing health problems. And some of the increased risks are small. But emerging science is finding that some emulsifiers alter the gut microbiome in a way that can cause inflammation. Inflammation has been implicated in a host of diseases.
In a small study with 16 people, the microbiomes of subjects who ate the emulsifier carboxymethylcellulose for 11 days were altered: They had fewer types of bacteria, more bacteria associated with poor health and less “good” bacteria than those who didn’t get the substance. (The diets of the two groups were identical, except for the emulsifier.)
Also, two participants in the emulsifier group had bacteria that had invaded the inner mucus layer in the gut. This encroachment is thought to lead to inflammation not just in the digestive system but throughout the body, said Andrew Gewirtz, a professor at Georgia State University and an author of the study, which was published in 2022 in the journal Gastroenterology.
The study in people builds on a larger body of research in animals and in the lab. Some recent research has found that people vary in their body’s response to emulsifiers. Scientists in the U.K. and France are investigating a low-emulsifier diet as a potential treatment for Crohn’s disease.
What you can do
You can avoid emulsifiers altogether by not eating ultra-processed foods. But that isn’t realistic for a lot of us.
The most concerning emulsifiers are the synthetic ones like carboxymethylcellulose, which is widely used in packaged baked goods, and polysorbate 80, which is often used in ice cream and other dairy products, says Gewirtz. He suggests avoiding the gums, like guar gum and xanthan gum, too. These substances generally aren’t digested. They pass through the large intestine, where they disrupt the microbiome, says Gewirtz.
Watch out for carrageenans, too, says Benoit Chassaing, head of the Microbiome-Host Interactions Group at Institut Pasteur in France. These are particularly common in low-fat yogurt and other low-fat dairy products. In his research, carrageenans reduce the amount of beneficial bacteria and promote the growth of bacteria associated with poor health.
The common emulsifier soy lecithin is likely less harmful, Gewirtz says, because it is a natural product that is more readily absorbed.
Touvier recommends the website and app Open Food Facts, a crowdsourced food database, that flags emulsifiers and other food additives.
The actual food you’re eating is still the most important factor in rating its healthiness, Mozaffarian notes. “If you’re consuming yogurt or a fruit dish or bean dish and it has one of these stabilizers in it, it’s still better for you than consuming bacon or, you know, candy,” he says.
Write to Andrea Petersen at andrea.petersen@wsj.com