Skim the ingredient checklist of many drinks, jams, canned greens, or frozen meals and also you’re prone to come throughout one that you would be able to 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 you must 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 offers 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 recognized for his or her ascorbic acid (AKA vitamin C) content material, citrus fruits really comprise extra citric acid. In truth, citric acid can account for as a lot as 8 % of the whole dry mass of a lime or lemon!

The preliminary discovery of citric acid is credited to eighth-century Persian alchemist Jabir Ibn Hayyan. But it surely 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 broadly 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 mildew on vegetables and fruit, 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 customary 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 components,” explains Amy Goodson, MS, RD, CSSD, LD, a board-certified specialist in sports activities dietetics. “It will also be added to canned vegetables and fruit to guard in opposition to botulism, a uncommon however critical sickness attributable to 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 presents, Goodson provides.

Listed here are just some citric acid’s purposes:

Citric Acid Advantages

Whereas citric acid presents a variety of advantages for meals and beverage producers, Goodson explains that dietary citric acid also can present quite a lot of well being advantages for customers as nicely.

1. Antioxidant properties

Some analysis has proven that citric acid could profit antioxidant exercise.

Antioxidants are substances present in meals like vegetables and fruit 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 perform.

2. Mineral absorption

Citric acid might 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, specifically.

3. Scale back bodily fatigue

Whereas extra analysis is required to grasp its connection to bodily fatigue, citric acid can also profit vitality ranges.

A small human examine reported within the Journal of Scientific Biochemistry and Diet discovered that oral consumption of citric acid helped scale back physiological stress and fatigue within the physique after onerous 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 vitality manufacturing during which citric acid is a major participant.

Is Citric Acid Dangerous for You?

Involved that citric acid could be unhealthy for you?

Whereas 99 % of the world’s manufacturing of citric acid is now manufactured as a substitute of derived from lemons, there may be 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.