May 21, 2026

expert reaction to study looking at food preservatives, blood pressure and heart disease

A study published in the European Heart Journal looks at preservative food additives and blood pressure and cardiovascular diseases. 

Rachel Richardson, Methods Support Unit Manager, The Cochrane Collaboration, said:

“The authors of this research have drawn on data from the NutriNet Santé cohort, a large group of people recruited in France and followed up over several years. In this study they have measured the consumption of various food preservatives and the incidence of hypertension and cardiovascular diseases to see if these are linked.

“It’s important to note that this is an observational study: this means that participants were not randomly allocated to consume more or fewer preservatives. As such we cannot be sure that the people who consumed more preservatives were not different from those who consumed fewer preservatives in ways that affected their risk of hypertension and CVD. For example, higher consumers may also have less healthy lifestyles than lower consumers and so the reason that they experience more ill-health is due to this, and not the preservatives.

“Having said that, the authors of this study did a good job of controlling for other factors that may influence health, such as age, BMI, smoking, physical activity and diet in general. Other strengths of this study include the way in which they assessed people’s diets and their comprehensive approach to identifying hypertension and CVD in the cohort. Although they cannot prove causation, there are signals in the results that warrant further investigation.

“There are reasons to be cautious when thinking about the implications of their findings for people in general and people in the UK. The people in the cohort were predominantly female and had healthier lifestyles than the general French population. The cohort is made up of volunteers so participants are likely to be more interested in diet and health than the average person. Finally French diets are likely to be quite different to UK diets and so the associations found in this study will not necessarily be similar in a UK context.”


Prof Gunter Kuhnle, Professor of Nutrition and Food Science, University of Reading, said:

“The most difficult aspect of nutrition research is knowing what people eat. And it is even more difficult to measure the consumption of individual compounds, because food is neither standardised nor regularly analysed. Processed food is usually standardised for taste and texture, not for composition, and the use of additives – including preservatives – depends on many factors, for example the quality of raw materials.

“In this study, the authors attempted to investigate whether preservatives are associated with cardiovascular disease risk. However, they have no reliable data to estimate individual consumption of preservatives because:

– the food industry is not required to provide information on the additive use in individual products and in most cases, there is only an upper limit;
– food composition changes regularly, and without analysis of individual food items, estimates are unreliable;
– the authors rely on the analysis of a small number of food-item and additive combinations and estimate composition for most other compounds.

“This means that any association observed in this study is less likely due to actual preservative intake and more likely due to specific dietary patterns. The authors divide the preservatives into “anti-oxidant” and “non-antioxidant” – which combines large, diverse groups of compounds which have very different effects on the human body. Among the non-antioxidant preservatives, which were associated with increased disease risk, where for example nitrites and nitrates, as well as sulphites – compounds found in foods that are known to increase the risk of heart disease such as processed meats.

“Preservatives have an important role in the food system, not only by preventing food-borne diseases, but also by preventing spoilage, reducing food waste and extending shelf life. In turn, this makes food more affordable.

“In the UK and Europe, food additives, including preservatives, are regularly reviewed by regulators for potentially adverse effects on health. There are sufficient examples that show that regulators are willing to make unpopular decisions and remove additives from the market when they consider there to be a health risk. Research into the health effects of additives is therefore important, but it needs to rely on reliable estimates of intake by individuals to avoid confounding with dietary patterns.

“Consumers should not be concerned by the findings of this study.”

‘Preservative food additives, hypertension, and cardiovascular diseases: the NutriNet-Santé study’ by Anaïs Hasenböhler et al. was published in the European Heart Journal at 00:05 UK time on Thursday 21 May 2026. 

DOI: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehag308

Declared interests

Rachel Richardson: “I have no interests to declare.”

Prof Gunter Kuhnle: “I am a former member of the UK Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products, and the Environment; a current member of the Advisory Committee on Novel Foods and Processes; the Director of the Chemical Analysis Facility at the University of Reading, which provides analytical services to academic and commercial clients; have received research funding (2010–20) from Mars for work on flavanols; and have received consultancy payments from RSM UK and EQT, paid to the University of Reading. As a member of the EFSA ANS panel (2018-2019) and the UK’s COT (2019-2025) I was involved in the evaluation of food additives.”