Breaking Down The Latest: Gums/Emulsifiers

When it comes to improving your nutrition and wellbeing, I often have my clients start out by learning more about the nutrition label and what goes into our foods. When deciding on whether to purchase a food or not, I believe that simplicity of ingredients is key. A good example is almond milk. The only ingredients that should be in almond milk are almonds, water and maybe some salt, but often times you’ll see almond milk with a laundry list of ingredients such as sunflower lecithin, gellan gum, guar gum and natural flavors. So, what is to make of some of these ingredients?

Well, according to the latest research, this is isn’t a one size fits all answer. The effect that gums/ emulsifiers has on our bodies is specific to the type of gum and where it is derived from. According to Tamara Duker Freuman, MS, RD, CDN , certain gums are dervied from plants while others are synthetically created. Some of the plant derived gums seem to actually have beneficial effects whereas some synthetic ones can cause inflammation and disruption to the gut. For example, guar gum is a form of soluble fiber which feeds healthy gut bacteria and helps with improving gut health. Other gums such as xanthan gum can potentially help to improve blood sugar levels as well. Synthetic gums, on the other hand, such as carrageenan or cellulose gum have shown in animal studies to contribute to inflammation in the gut. Some research has also linked the use of certain gums/emulsifiers with an increase in metabolic syndrome. In this case, I would also look at the foods that tend to have more stabilizers in them. Those foods may contain an excess of sugar, saturated fat and sodium which can be more of a correlation rather than causation with the emulsifiers.

Despite both ends of the research, I do believe that the best method of improving your overall nutrition and health is to focus on whole foods and reducing processed foods. One easy way to do this is to shop primarily the outter isles of the grocery store. This is where you will find your whole food staples such as produce, meat/poultry/seafood and eggs/diary products. There are definitely foods that are nutritious in the inner isles, but looking at the majority of our nutrition, we should be getting it from more of the whole foods and reducing consumption of foods that are heavily processed with lots of different additives.

To learn more about improving your nutrition and reducing your consumption of processed foods, send an email to nutrikaywellness@gmail.com ! Nutrition counseling sessions are often covered by insurance with no out-of-pocket costs!

Reference

Are gums and emulsifiers in foods safe? | U.S. news. (n.d.). https://health.usnews.com/health-news/blogs/eat-run/articles/are-gums-and-emulsifiers-in-foods-safe

De Siena M, Raoul P, Costantini L, Scarpellini E, Cintoni M, Gasbarrini A, Rinninella E, Mele MC. Food Emulsifiers and Metabolic Syndrome: The Role of the Gut Microbiota. Foods. 2022 Jul 25;11(15):2205. doi: 10.3390/foods11152205. PMID: 35892789; PMCID: PMC9331555.