Skim the ingredient checklist of many drinks, jams, canned greens, or frozen meals and also you’re prone to come throughout one that you could really pronounce — citric acid.
Regardless of its prevalence, few customers know what it’s or the place it comes from. (Although that first phrase ought to offer you a clue…)
Right here’s what it’s best to find out about citric acid, together with its origins, makes use of, and advantages.
What Is Citric Acid?
Citric acid is an edible acid naturally present in citrus fruits, and it’s what provides them their bitter style.
It’s additionally commercially manufactured for all kinds of makes use of in processed meals and drinks, cleansing merchandise, prescription drugs, dietary dietary supplements, and cosmetics.
Whereas lemons and limes could also be extra generally identified for his or her ascorbic acid (AKA vitamin C) content material, citrus fruits really include extra citric acid. In reality, citric acid can account for as a lot as 8 p.c of the full dry mass of a lime or lemon!
The preliminary discovery of citric acid is credited to eighth-century Persian alchemist Jabir Ibn Hayyan. However it wasn’t till the late 1700s when Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele first remoted citric acid from lemon juice.
Over the following century, citric acid grew to become extensively utilized in a wide range of meals, cleansing, and beauty merchandise as a preservative, flavor-enhancer, and stabilizer.
Within the 1900s, American meals chemist James Currie discovered {that a} widespread fungus that causes black mould on fruit and veggies, Aspergillus niger, produces giant quantities of citric acid when fed a sugar answer.
This artificial technique of deriving citric acid revolutionized the market and have become the brand new normal for its industrial manufacturing.
Citric Acid Makes use of in Meals
“It’s utilized in meals and drinks to spice up acidity, improve taste, and protect elements,” explains Amy Goodson, MS, RD, CSSD, LD, a board-certified specialist in sports activities dietetics. “It can be added to canned fruit and veggies to guard in opposition to botulism, a uncommon however critical sickness brought on by micro organism.”
Citric acid is without doubt one of the commonest meals components on the earth due to the number of makes use of and advantages it affords, Goodson provides.
Listed below are only a few citric acid’s functions:
Citric Acid Advantages
Whereas citric acid affords a spread of advantages for meals and beverage producers, Goodson explains that dietary citric acid can even present quite a lot of well being advantages for customers as properly.
1. Antioxidant properties
Some analysis has proven that citric acid might profit antioxidant exercise.
Antioxidants are substances present in meals like fruit and veggies that will stop or delay sure varieties oxidative stress that may trigger cell injury. Citric acid is related to antioxidant advantages for serving to to help the immune system in addition to liver and mind operate.
2. Mineral absorption
Citric acid may also help your physique retain some key minerals. “Citric acid enhances the bioavailability of sure minerals, serving to your physique to higher take up them,” explains Goodson.
Research have supported a hyperlink between citric acid and mineral absorption, calcium and phosphorus, particularly.
3. Scale back bodily fatigue
Whereas extra analysis is required to grasp its connection to bodily fatigue, citric acid can also profit power ranges.
A small human examine reported within the Journal of Medical Biochemistry and Diet discovered that oral consumption of citric acid helped cut back physiological stress and fatigue within the physique after arduous exercises.
Whereas the explanations for this phenomenon aren’t totally understood, it’s theorized that it might have one thing to do with the cycle of power manufacturing by which citric acid is a major participant.
Is Citric Acid Unhealthy for You?
Involved that citric acid is likely to be unhealthy for you?
Whereas 99 p.c of the world’s manufacturing of citric acid is now manufactured as an alternative of derived from lemons, there’s little proof that citric acid — even the artificial stuff — has well being dangers for customers, says Goodson.
“Manufactured citric acid is typically acknowledged as secure (GRAS) by the Meals and Drug Administration (FDA). So customers can really feel secure consuming it as part of meals and drinks,” Goodson explains.
