An elegant study published in BMJ shows that commonly used food preservatives and additives can increase risk of Cancer and Diabetes.

Some officially approved and commonly used, food additives such as “sodium nitrite, potassium nitrate, sorbates, potassium metabisulfite, acetates, acetic acid” and Antioxidant preservatives such as Sodium erythorbate have been found to be associated with increased risk of cancer.

In addition these preservatives– potassium sorbate, potassium metabisulfite, sodium nitrite, acetic acid and sodium acetate– were also found to increase the risk of diabetes”.

Other additives such as “calcium propionate, alpha-tocopherol, sodium ascorbate, rosemary extracts, sodium erythorbate, phosphoric acid and citric acid” were also associated with diabetes risk.

What does it mean?

In practical terms- preservatives and additives are everywhere.

Study revealed that

• about 85% sulfite intake was from alcoholic drinks;
• about 50% of nitrites, 80% of nitrates, and 40% of erythorbates from processed meat.
• about 50 % of ascorbates and 25% of citrates from processed fruit and vegetables;
• about 30% of tocopherols from breakfast cereals.

With such widespread presence of these preservatives in practically all processed foods, it would be hard to avoid them.

Unless one consumes organic fresh food only, it is hard to avoid additives and preservatives. So the compromise approach would be to minimise processed food as much as possible.

A word of caution. Obviously, with any observational study, there would be unknown factors and we definitely need more confirmatory studies.

References

1. CNN. Common food preservatives linked to cancer and type 2 diabetes
2. BMJ. Intake of food additive preservatives and incidence of cancer: results from the NutriNet-Santé prospective cohort
   BMJ 2026; 392 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj-2025-084917 (Published 07 January 2026). Cite this as: BMJ 2026;392:e084917 

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