Emulsifiers: What and where?

Posted by Charlotte Miller on

So what is the deal with emulsifiers? There’s been a lot of talk about these food additives of late, but what are they exactly and where might you find them?

Emulsifiers are one of the most widely used food additives – added to processed foods like ice cream, ready meals, salad dressings and sauces, margarine and even bread, to improve texture and mouthfeel.  Basically, they work by combining ingredients that don’t usually mix together  (like oil and water for example).⁣⠀⁣⠀

So what’s all the fuss about? Animal studies indicate emulsifiers in processed food may be disrupting our healthy intestinal lining and damaging our precious gut microbiome. Ultimately, we need more studies (on humans not mice), to investigate whether emulsifiers are in fact related to damage, inflammation and chronic disease, in the amount we’re currently eating them.⁣⠀⁣⠀

The best way to reduce emulsifiers for now? Eat less processed food. You can read more about emulsifiers at @theconversation.com But we just thought you’d like to know that we don’t keep emulsifiers in the We Feed You kitchen and we don’t add them to your meals – we use real food that you'd find in most home kitchens and pantries.  But you probably already guessed that!

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