French researchers find hard evidence of cocktail effects of food additives

09 April 2025

For the first time, a broad-based study has found evidence of cocktail effects of certain combinations of food additives.

Researchers in the field of nutritional epidemiology from France’s National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE), The National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm), and Sorbonne University have found negative effects of food additive combinations leading to type 2 diabetes.  

The team studied the impact of 5 different combinations of food additives, common in ultra-processed foods, sugar-sweetened beverages, and other food products. These included thickeners and gelling agents used in prepared sauces, dairy-based desserts, or broth; as well as acidifiers, sweeteners, and colourings. They studied the medical data of over 100,000 adults from France.

Two of the tested combinations were found to increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. The results have been published in Plos Medicine.

This is the first broad-based study about the cocktail effects of food additives. These findings are very important because safety evaluation of food additives is conducted individually on each substance, when in real-life additives are consumed in mixes by millions of people.

The study paves the way to changes in food risk evaluation to consider and measure cocktail effects, a long-standing demand of SAFE.