One of the UK’s leading diet experts has put together a shocking demonstration to highlight the effects of a potentially harmful ingredient lurking in many of our favourite foods.
In a new video, Professor Tim Spector, founder of diet app ZOE, showed how additives called emulsifiers form a gelatinous mass in our intestines.
The clip shows the nutrition expert demonstrating what happens to emulsifiers (used to add bulk to foods) in our gut, when the powder is mixed into a container with liquid.
The mass that forms, he says, wreaks havoc on the millions of healthy bacteria that live there and are vital to protecting us from diseases like cancer and heart disease.
Emulsifiers are used in thousands of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) to help bind ingredients that don’t normally mix, such as oil and water.
Professor Tim Spector has demonstrated the stomach-turning effect that emulsifiers have on the gut.
They are found in a variety of popular products, including bread, cakes, breakfast cereals and children’s yogurts.
Some experts have linked the increased consumption of additives such as emulsifiers to an increase in early-onset bowel cancer.
Imperial College London’s nutrition director Dr Federica Amati explained last month the harm that Emulsifiers “disrupt” the separation between the fat layer and the water layer in the intestine.
It has been theorized that this destroys the intestinal lining, leading to bacterial infections.
Last month, microbiome expert Dr Alasdair Scott told The Mail on Sunday: ‘We think this process could be linked to bowel cancer.
‘There are studies in animals that confirm this, but not yet in humans; in humans it can be much more difficult to prove exactly why a tumor has formed.’
In the TikTok video, which has nearly 14,000 views, Professor Spector He begins his demonstration by mixing a commonly used emulsifier, carboxymethylcellulose (CMC), with water.
“We’ve never really understood why these chemicals have these effects, but I’m going to show it,” he says.
When mixing the two ingredients, it is observed that the powder and water come together to create a sticky mass.
“This is what happens in our gut. We think this is because our microbes can’t communicate and produce abnormal chemicals in response.”
He added: ‘They disrupt the gut lining because we have a protective layer of fat and water in our gut, but these emulsifiers mix the two.
‘So let’s try to reduce them in our diet.
Simple processed foods include canned and cooked vegetables, fish such as tuna, and everyday items such as cheese.
These contain little more than the main ingredient and water, oil, or one of two additional ingredients; you could potentially make them yourself.
However, UPFs are highly processed, involve factory techniques, and contain additives, of which emulsifiers are just one.
They currently account for 57 per cent of the average UK diet.
Manufacturers are not required to record the amount of emulsifiers in each individual food, so we never really know how much we are consuming.
Experts have warned that bowel cancer is affecting more and more young people, and diets high in UPF could be a possible cause.
The incidence of the disease, which kills 17,000 people a year in the UK, has risen by 22 per cent among those under 50 over the past 30 years.
Ultra-processed foods were also linked to an increased risk of heart disease, according to a study published in the Lancet journal last year.
An equally elevated risk has also been found for type 2 diabetes.
