Eight common food preservatives are linked to a 29% jump in high blood pressure

Researchers tracking more than 112,000 people in France have linked a group of eight common food preservatives to as much as a 29% higher risk of developing high blood pressure among the heaviest consumers. The findings, published in the European Heart Journal, come from the long-running NutriNet-Sante cohort and were led by Anais Hasenbohler, a PhD student, and Dr. Mathilde Touvier, a research director at INSERM, both with the Nutritional Epidemiology Research Team at Universite Sorbonne Paris Nord.

The eight preservatives named in the study are staples of the packaged-food aisle: potassium sorbate (E202), potassium metabisulphite (E224), sodium nitrite (E250), ascorbic acid (E300), sodium ascorbate (E301), sodium erythorbate (E316), citric acid (E330) and rosemary extract (E392). Each is already present in hundreds of thousands of industrially processed foods sold across Europe and the United States, turning up in everyday items such as cured and deli meats, bottled soft drinks, wine, dried fruit and packaged baked goods.

Two categories of preservatives, two separate risks

Researchers sorted the preservatives people ate into two broad categories. Non-antioxidant preservatives, which include sodium nitrite and potassium sorbate, work mainly by stopping bacteria and mold from growing in food. Antioxidant preservatives, including ascorbic acid and sodium ascorbate, instead slow oxidation, the chemical process that turns food rancid or causes it to brown and lose flavor over time.

People eating the largest amounts of non-antioxidant preservatives had a 29% higher risk of hypertension than those eating the smallest amounts, the strongest single association the team found. A separate analysis of the heaviest consumers of antioxidant preservatives found a 22% higher hypertension risk, meaning some of the same eight compounds carried an elevated signal under either grouping.

Seven years of three-day food diaries built the case

The NutriNet-Sante project asked its 112,395 volunteers to record everything they ate and drank over a three-day stretch every six months, a method detailed enough to catalog the specific additives in each product rather than just the food categories. Researchers then followed participants for an average of seven to eight years, tracking who went on to develop high blood pressure.

“Food preservatives are used in hundreds of thousands of industrially processed foods,” Hasenbohler said. Experimental studies suggest that some preservative additives may be harmful to cardiovascular health, Hasenbohler added, but until now there has been too little evidence on what those ingredients do in humans. Exposure to at least one preservative turned out to be almost universal: 99.5% of volunteers consumed one during just the first two years of the study, a reminder of how hard these additives are to avoid inside a modern packaged-food supply.

A pancreas-and-oxidative-stress theory, not yet proof

Touvier was careful to note the limits of an observational study, which can identify a statistical pattern but cannot prove that any one preservative directly causes high blood pressure. “This study has some limitations inherent to its observational design,” she said. The findings nonetheless rest on highly detailed data, she said, and the analysis accounted for other factors that raise or lower cardiovascular risk.

One candidate mechanism is oxidative stress, in which reactive molecules build up faster than the body’s own defenses can clear them, gradually damaging cells and blood vessels. Researchers are separately examining whether some preservatives interfere with pancreatic function, since the pancreas helps regulate blood sugar and metabolism broadly, and the same team is now studying how these additives might affect inflammation, blood metabolic markers and the gut’s bacterial population.

The Sorbonne Paris Nord group has flagged this cohort’s preservative data before. An earlier NutriNet-Sante analysis published in January 2026 linked heavier preservative consumption to a higher rate of cancer diagnoses over the same follow-up period, a separate finding that suggests the additives researchers are now tying to blood pressure may be worth a broader look across more than one disease outcome.

Regulators are being asked to take a second look

Touvier said the results point toward a fresh review of these additives by food-safety regulators, naming the European Food Safety Authority and the United States Food and Drug Administration as the bodies best placed to reassess the risks and benefits for consumer protection. That review, if it happens, would take time, since it would need to weigh preservatives’ role in preventing foodborne illness against the hypertension signal this study surfaced.

In the meantime, Touvier said the findings support existing advice to favor minimally processed foods and skip additives that are not necessary, guidance she said doctors and other health professionals have a role in explaining to patients. For a population where avoiding preservatives entirely is close to impossible, that advice functions less as a warning to eliminate any single ingredient and more as a nudge toward eating less processed food overall.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

More from Morning Overview