Food Additives & the Zero-Added Label

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What a preservative is holding back

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Whether a molecule is safe depends on what it is, how much of it you take in, and how fast your body clears it, not on whether the label says added. The bit of nitrite in cured pork is an example: it is holding back a bacterium that can stop a person breathing.

The bacterium is Clostridium botulinum. Its spores are everywhere, in soil and on the surface of meat, and they usually lie quiet. It hates oxygen, and cured meat is exactly the home it likes: no oxygen, moist, room temperature, plenty of protein. Once the spores wake up, they release a nerve toxin into the meat. The toxin jams the switch that nerves use to signal muscles: first the eyelids cannot stay up and speech slurs, then the paralysis moves down to the breathing muscles. If these symptoms, or blurred vision or trouble swallowing, follow homemade cured meat, canned food or fermented food, go to the emergency department immediately.

Nitrite slows the growth of the bacterium and delays the production of its toxin; it also fixes that pink color. Take it out and you do not get cleaner meat; you reopen the door to botulism. So the real choice is never additives or no additives; it is which risk is smaller and easier to control. How the body clears a molecule dose by dose is covered in the chapter Why the dose makes the poison.

Educational content, not medical advice — consult a clinician.

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