Manufactured Citric Acid: Ubiquitous but Not Innocuous

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The photo above was added only to the website version of this article for our social media sharing. It was not included in the paper copy of the journal sent to members. The photo was posted on Pfizer’s Facebook page with this description: “From the Pfizer Photo Archives: Citric acid manufactured by fermentation at Pfizer’s Brooklyn plant (1948).”  It sounds benign, but read Merinda Teller’s article below to learn why it isn’t!

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Every good cook knows that delicious and satisfying food involves both chemistry and artistry. Michael Pollan alludes to both in his foreword to Sandor Katz’s wonderfully encyclo­pedic 2012 book, The Art of Fermentation, de­scribing the Korean concepts of “tongue taste” versus “hand taste.” The former refers to “the kind of cheap and easy flavors any food scientist or food corporation can produce,” while “hand taste” is “the far more complex experience of a food that bears the indelible mark—the care and sometimes even the love—of the person who made it.”¹

“Tongue taste” predominates, of course, on the industrial food scene, where a scary new wave of synthetic foods is now entering the market.² Many of these newfangled lab concoc­tions are the result of technologies perfected by the twenty-first-century biopharmaceutical industry,³ but they also build on decades of food science focused on chemical food additives that confer “cheap and easy flavors” and help prod­ucts stay on shelves longer. To allay possible consumer concerns, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) touts the “many techno­logical, aesthetic and convenient benefits” of food additives, telling the public not to worry if they see “long, unfamiliar names” and “complex chemical compounds” on food labels.⁴

The innocuous-sounding “citric acid” is an additive that may fly under the radar of even the most attentive consumer. As researchers observed in Toxicology Reports in 2018, the “average consumer is under the impression that the added citric acid listed in the ingredients of prepared foods, beverages and vitamins is derived from natural sources such as lemons and limes,” but nothing could be further from the truth.5 More accurate labeling, the writers argued, would require using the term “manu­factured citric acid” (MCA)—but even “manu­factured” doesn’t convey the full picture of an additive derived from industrial-scale microbial fermentation involving degradation of carbo­hydrate substrates (such as corn byproducts or molasses) by a common black mold called Aspergillus niger. A. niger and its “cousins” A. fumigatus and A. flavus can be harmful to humans, especially in individuals who are mold-allergic or in suboptimal health.⁵

As of 2022, global production of MCA had reached over 2.8 million tons,⁶ with 70 percent going to food and beverage applications. MCA functions as “an acidulant, preservative, emulsi­fier, flavorant, sequestrant [or] buffering agent”⁷ and appears in everything from baby food to items like “pre-packaged fruits and veggies, canned or jarred foods, hummus, salsa, chicken stock, some yogurts and cheeses [and] baked goods and desserts,”⁸ as well as in nutraceuticals and in beverages ranging from juices to soft drinks to wine. Another 20 percent of the global supply goes to the pharmaceutical industry and to cosmetic and personal care products, which makes MCA available for absorption by the skin.⁹ “Novel pharmaceutical and biomedical applications” are fueling further “significant growth” of the citric acid market—expected to reach 3.3 million tons by 2028.6 With expansion to sectors such as the “feed, electrical, textile [and] plastics industries,”¹⁰ enthusiasts predict that MCA “will become a key chemical in the emerging bioeconomy.”⁷

This “key chemical” has never undergone any safety studies. In 1958, the FDA adopted a Food Additives Amendment to the 1938 Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, with the amend­ment specifying that “any substance intentional­ly added to food is a food additive and is subject to pre-market approval by FDA unless the use of the substance is generally recognized as safe (GRAS)” [emphasis added].¹¹ Manufactured cit­ric acid, which had been in use well before 1958, was among the additives “grandfathered” in as GRAS, which allowed the nation’s lead regula­tory agency to dispense with any evaluation of MCA safety “when ingested in substantial amounts and with chronic exposure.”⁵ GRAS substances, moreover, generally come with “no quantitative restrictions as to use.”¹²

FROM LEMONS TO MOLD. . . BY WAY OF PFIZER

History credits Muslim alchemist Jābir Ibn Ḥayyān—known as “the father of Arabic chemistry”—with discovering natural citric acid in the eighth century.¹³ In the late 1700s, Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele was the first to actually isolate citric acid from lemon juice, developing a method soon adopted in other countries for commercial production.¹⁴ In the early twentieth century, however, food scientists were interested in lowering the cost of citric acid and turned their attention from citrus fruit to synthetic options.¹⁵

Pfizer brags on its website about its pioneer­ing 1919 role in developing a process to mass-produce citric acid through mold fermentation, jubilantly stating that this achievement freed Pfizer “from dependency on European citrus growers.”¹⁶ Career Pfizer chemist Joseph G. Lombardino explained the breakthrough in a cheerful paper titled “A Brief History of Pfizer Central Research” published in 2000:

“From 1917 to 1929 James Currie, Pfizer’s first research chemist, developed a process for producing citric acid by fermentation of sugar. Currie came from the Department of Agriculture, where he was trying to produce an American brand of Roquefort cheese by fermentation. He was not successful. He then tried to ferment sugar to produce oxalic acid but again failed. However, he noticed an inter­esting byproduct in this fermentation: citric acid. Currie contacted Pfizer, related his finding, was hired, and, with his assistant Jasper Kane, eventually developed a large-scale fermentation process for citric acid.”¹⁷

Kane made an additional discovery in 1923, finding that less expen­sive molasses worked just as well as refined sugar as the substrate for microbial fermentation. By 1929, Pfizer was making ten million pounds of citric acid, “with the product taking over almost the whole market at that time”¹⁷ and also becoming Pfizer’s main product.¹⁸ As one enthusi­ astic group of authors later summed up Pfizer’s success, “Two years after Currie’s discovery, industrial-level production using A. niger began, the biochemical fermentation industry started to flourish, and industrial biotechnology was born”; a century later, citric acid production had become a multibillion dollar industry.¹⁹ As of 2017, citric acid was the “single largest chemical obtained via biomass fermentation and the most widely employed organic acid.”⁷

CARTELS, CONSPIRACIES AND CORN

Among the features of the A. niger mold celebrated by food chemists are its ease of han­dling, its high yields and its versatility—that is, its ability to “ferment various cheap raw materials,”¹⁴ including not just molasses from sugar cane or sugar beets but also other carbo­hydrate substrates such as those derived from corn.^20,21 Corn refining—also called “corn wet milling”—separates the outer bran or hull, the germ and the starch-containing endosperm, yielding “hundreds” of corn products and by­products, including corn syrup, cornstarch, corn oil and alcohol.²²

Although Pfizer and a Bayer subsidiary dominated the American citric acid market through the 1980s as a “duopoly,” both compa­nies had to buy their substrate externally, “a situ­ation that added to their costs of production.”²³ In 1990, first Cargill and then Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) took advantage of their status as “corn biotech firms” to enter and build a new type of citric acid market, with their integrated production model providing “economies that reduced costs of production by 5 or 10% over the traditional system.” Cargill’s plant was “the first to be able to pipe in liquid feedstock directly to its citric acid facility.”²³ ADM, for its part, adopted a somewhat different tactic, buying up Pfizer’s “most modern plant” and, with updates and expansion, turning it into the largest citric acid plant in the world. As a result, by December 1990, Bayer was left as America’s only non-integrated citric acid manufacturer and Pfizer was no longer a player.²³

As explained in a fascinating 1998 article by agricultural economist John Connor, titled “The Global Citric Acid Conspiracy: Legal- Economic Lessons,” the “complete makeover of the structure of ownership and production in the US citric acid market” that began in 1990 soon encouraged less than savory corporate behavior.²³ The U.S. later indicted ADM, Bayer, and two major Swiss citric acid producers (Jung­bunzlauer and Roche) for establishing a secret citric acid “cartel” that engaged in price-fixing and set limits on output; although Cargill was not indicted, there is evidence to suggest that it, too, was an influential cartel member, albeit a less visible one. Citric acid buyers involved in the federal class action eventually received mil­lions in settlements, but the penalties amounted to “pennies on the dollar” and left companies like ADM “at most chastened, [but] not in any sense reformed.”

In 1998 when Connor recounted his story of corporate intrigue and back-room meetings in luxury hotels, he viewed the rise of citric acid production in other countries, and espe­cially China, as a positive trend and potential check against cartel shenanigans. Fifteen years later, China’s citric acid production has come to represent 70 percent of the world’s total volume and accounts for 60 percent of global trading volume.10 Outside of China, ADM and Cargill—but not Bayer—are still in the picture as well, along with a handful of British, Swiss, Belgian and Israeli companies.⁶

FALSE COMPLACENCY ABOUT MOLD

Giving the lie to the FDA’s complacency about manufactured citric acid’s GRAS status, researchers outside the FDA orbit—as well as sickened consumers—have reported numerous problems, linking MCA to inflammatory reac­tions like “acid reflux, nausea, stomach pain, cramps, and. . . hives”⁹ involving the respiratory, gastrointestinal, neurological and musculoskel­etal systems.

As already mentioned, one likely trigger, especially of allergic-type symptoms character­istic of mold reactions, has to do with A. niger itself. Describing the absolute dearth of research on MCA safety, in 2018 a University of Illinois researcher and her coauthor published what they described as “the first scientific report revealing the potential inflammatory reactions related to ingestion of MCA,” presenting four case reports of individuals prone to experiencing symptoms within two to twelve hours of MCA ingestion via food, beverages or vitamins.⁵ Noting the concurrent rise of MCA use and the growing epidemic of food allergies, they hypothesized that “the potential presence of impurities or fragments from the Aspergillus niger in MCA is a significant difference [from natural cit­ric acid] that may trigger deleterious effects when ingested.”⁵ In related research, a study documented occupational asthma as a hazard of an improperly ventilated biotech plant that manufactured citric acid, where A. niger spores averaged one hundred times those found in the outside air.²⁴

In the first of the four case reports, a fifty-two year-old woman who developed “debilitat­ing” symptoms in her late thirties experienced “severe diffuse joint and muscle pain in the up­per and lower extremities with associated joint swelling, abdominal bloating with cramping and feeling enervated [exhausted],” all occurring within six to twelve hours of MCA ingestion. The woman spent years making the rounds of specialists in rheumatology and immunology, undergoing “extensive work-ups for auto-immune disease, rheumatoid arthritis, vitamin deficien­cies, as well as adrenal and thyroid imbalance, all of which were nega­tive.” It was only after extensive “trial and error” dietary modifications that she identified the commonality: the presence of citric acid. Another case described similar symptoms of severe joint and muscle pain and swelling, while the two remaining cases reported fatigue on a par with chronic fatigue syndrome as well as shortness of breath (in a man with pre-existing asthma) and swelling of a prosthetic knee.⁵

In all four case reports, a dose-response relationship was evident, as described in case number one:

“The extent of her joint pain, abdominal discomfort and enerva­tion was directly correlated with the amount of MCA ingested at a given time. If she consumed a meal in which a food item contained MCA and consumed a drink in which MCA was one of the leading ingredients, her symptoms were worse and lasted longer than if she consumed a single food item in which MCA was listed as a more minor ingredient. Even pre-prepared organic foods that were free of all additives except MCA would elicit her symptoms.”

Arguing that “the ubiquitous presence of MCA and repetitive ex­posure to it through ingesting common foods and beverages” entails the repeat introduction “of A. niger proteins or byproducts. . . repeatedly eliciting an insidious low grade immune response,” the two authors hypothesized that MCA-induced inflammatory reactions might be playing a “causative role” in musculoskeletal conditions like allergic asthma, fibromyalgia, juvenile idiopathic arthritis and chronic fatigue syndrome as well as gastrointes­tinal conditions like irritable bowel syndrome.⁵

OTHER HIDDEN RISKS

To increase MCA production, A. niger has undergone “significant genetic modifications. . . resulting in genetically modified mutant variants of this mold.”⁵ Some believe that this places the mold squarely in the category of a genetically modified organism (GMO).¹⁵

The fact that corn has become a dominant substrate for the production of citric acid also raises GMO-related issues. The corn in indus­trial use is likely to be GMO, but a loophole in federal regulations for “nonagricultural sub­stances”²⁵ allows products labeled as “organic” or “made with organic ingredients” to include GMO-derived citric acid without disclosure (§205.605).²⁶

Interestingly, the Organic Materials Review Institute (OMRI), a nonprofit organization that “supports organic integrity,” shares the govern­ment’s convoluted logic on this point. To comply with OMRI’s evaluation criteria for genetic engineering (GE) material used in organic food processing, OMRI requires citric acid producers to use a non-GE strain of the fungus (A. niger), but the substrate can consist of GE ingredients; according to OMRI, “the final citric acid prod­uct would be allowed as a non-GE ingredient” because the fungus “biologically transforms GE protein in the substrate.”²⁷ It is unclear whether OMRI has taken into account the massive ge­netic tinkering that has turned all strains of A. niger into GMOs.

Some citric acid skeptics have pointed out that the omnipresent additive is also a hidden source of monosodium glutamate (MSG), which acts as an excitotoxin.²⁸ One website explains the MSG connection, adding that companies can include citric acid in products labeled as “no MSG”:

“[C]orn is soaked in water with sulfur dioxide in order to remove the corn kernel and the remaining liquor is what is used to make the citric acid. However, during this process, the corn protein gets completely degraded, and manufacturers don’t remove this remaining protein, which leads to the protein becoming hydrolyzed, which means there is now free glutamic acid, aka MSG in the citric acid. Citric acid also has the capa­bility to react with other proteins it comes in contact with (in processed foods), thus freeing up even more glutamic acid. Be­cause this manufactured citric acid contains MSG, it is now considered an excitotoxin.”⁹

In January 2019, a writer for The Atlantic described “What life is like when corn is off the table,” outlining the considerable challenges that one corn-allergic individual faced when trying to eliminate corn derivatives such as citric acid from her diet:

“[S]he tried to put salt on her tomatoes. (Table salt has dextrose, a sugar derived from corn.) She tried drinking bottled iced tea. (It contains citric acid, which often comes from mold grown in corn-derived sugar.) She tried bottled water. (Added minerals in some brands can be processed with a corn derivative.) She ultimately gave up on supermarket meat (sprayed with lactic acid from fermented corn sugars), bagged salads (citric acid, again), fish (dipped in cornstarch or syrup before freezing), grains (cross-contaminated in processing facili­ties), fruits like apples and citrus (waxed with corn-derived chemicals), tomatoes (ripened with ethylene gas from corn), milk (added vitamins processed with corn derivatives). And that’s not even getting to all the processed foods made with high-fructose corn syrup, modified food starch, xanthan gum, artificial flavorings, corn alcohol, maltodextrin—all of which are or contain derivatives of corn.”²⁹

Unfortunately, as frequent Wise Traditions contributor John Moody noted in an article about citric acid, it can be tricky to ascertain whether a reaction to a food or beverage con­taining MCA has to do with the corn, mold or MSG.²⁸

THE IDEAL DIET

Citric acid is likely to remain firmly en­trenched in the food and beverage industries, but scientists also have their eye on other fancy, high-tech horizons, including “engineer[ing] citric acid-based polymers with enhanced me­chanical properties, nanoporous features, and unique photoluminescent capabilities.”⁶ While the mold-based production process launched by Pfizer over a century ago is still going strong and “provides satisfactory performance,” scien­tists also see “room for greater improvements in increasing yield and minimizing waste by developing novel fermentation techniques and the optimization of A. niger using genetic ma­nipulation.”¹⁴ If any of these mad scientists are concerned about the potential health impact of their “manipulations,” they aren’t saying.

The FDA’s website on food additives help­fully explains that—heaven forbid!—“Some additives could be eliminated if we were willing to grow our own food, harvest and grind it, [and] spend many hours cooking and canning.”⁴ Meanwhile, The Atlantic’s description of life without corn notes, “The diet of someone with a severe corn allergy is in some ways the ideal diet for a certain type of foodie: fresh, local, free of preservatives and processed foods, the provenance of every ingredient intensely cataloged.”²⁹ The Atlantic’s punchline is, “It’s just not exactly by choice,” but the fact is that we do have a choice. In the face of increasingly widespread and insidious risks, we can eschew lab-engineered “cheap and easy flavors” and recognize that the “ideal diet for a certain type of foodie” is actually an ideal—and delicious—diet for everyone.

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SIDEBARS

AND THEN THERE’S LACTIC ACID

Like citric acid, commercial “lactic acid” sounds deceptively benign—but probably isn’t. Natural lactic acid is, of course, the wondrous and time-honored preservative created by bacteria during lacto-fermentation. Lactobacilli convert the starches and sugars in vegetables and fruits, and lactose in milk, into lactic acid, producing delicious ferments that make the foods more digestible and promote the growth of healthy gut flora. Manufactured lactic acid—though classi­fied by FDA as GRAS³⁰—is a different story. The food industry accounts for about 35 percent of global lactic acid use.

Historically, the same Swedish chemist who first isolated citric acid from lemons, Carl Wilhelm Scheele, also isolated lactic acid from sour milk. Initial attempts at industrial production of lactic acid began around the same time as for citric acid, in the late 1880s,³¹ but with somewhat mixed results. In 1944, for example, a food scientist complained about the problem of equipment corrosion, stating “None of the materials in commercial use is entirely satisfactory.”³² In more recent times, as new manufacturing processes have come online, including biotech processes, production of lactic acid and its derivatives has taken off, becoming of “earnest importance” not just for the food industry but also for the phar­maceutical, cosmetics, textile and even electronics industries, among others.³³ For example, lactic acid is the precursor for polylactic acid (PLA), a synthetic plastic that is currently all the rage for orthopedic, dermatological and other medical applications, including implants.³⁴

Commercial lactic acid production generally relies on one of two broad approaches: industrial fermentation or chemical synthesis. In the early 1960s, Monsanto met 40 percent of the U.S. demand for lactic acid after becoming the first company to focus in a big way on chemical synthesis.³⁵ Chemical synthesis uses substances like the synthetic ad­ditive propylene glycol (a type of antifreeze and solvent) or acetaldehyde; in a blog post titled “³ Weird Things About Acetaldehyde,” the CDC describes it as carcinogenic and damaging to DNA.³⁶

Most manufacturers prefer the less expensive fermentation method, however, which makes use of either bacteria, fungi or yeast extracts and various “cheap raw materials” or “agricultural residues” from corn or other starchy materials.³³ Additional source materials being explored for lactic acid production include food wastes—considered advantageous for “environmental waste management”—and glycerol, a by-product of biodiesel production.³⁵ (Consumers with food allergies have noted the impossibility of knowing where the “lactic acid” in a given food comes from.³⁷) ADM entered the lactic acid market using industrial fermentation in the early 1990s, but as of 2017, the top three producers were Cargill, the Dutch company Corbion (producer of Purac and related “lactic acid solutions”) and the Chinese firm Henan Jindan Lactic Acid Technology Co. (“Jindan”).³⁵ Citing opportunities for “accelerated development,” Jindan celebrates its “self-developed strain breeding system” (buttressed by twenty-eight patents) as well as the “advantages of being located in [a] main corn production area” where it can avail itself of “rich local corn resources.”³⁸

THE RISE OF THE HOUSE OF PFIZER

Pfizer was founded in 1849 by two men named Charles who were cousins: chemist Charles Pfizer and confectioner Charles Erhart. As recounted by former Pfizer chemist Joseph Lombardino,³⁹ who started working for Pfizer in 1957 and later developed a blockbuster arthritis drug that “became Pfizer’s largest selling drug product at the time,” the company’s first successful nineteenth-century product was a chemical treatment for intestinal worms. During the Civil War, Pfizer sold products ranging from iodine to morphine, reaching a workforce size of one hundred fifty and achieving sales rev­enues of $1.4 million by 1865.¹⁷ Unless otherwise noted, the following short list of milestones comes from Lombardino.¹⁷

1936: Following its citric acid success, Pfizer becomes a top producer of vitamin C.⁴⁰ By the late 1940s, according to the company website, it has become “the established leader in the manufacture of vitamins.”

1944: Using the deep-tank fermentation methods pioneered for citric acid, the company achieves “another major fermentation success” during World War II—the large-scale manufacture of penicillin for U.S. troops. “[S]o much penicillin was produced that prices fell from 20 dollars to 20 cents per 100,000 Units” [emphasis in original].

1952-1953: Thanks to a clever advertising campaign by Arthur Sackler (progenitor of Purdue Pharma, the company that later aggressively markets the opioid OxyContin),⁴¹ sales of Pfizer’s “broad spectrum” antibiotic Terramycin ex­plode, accounting for 42 percent of company revenues. Pfizer builds a massive sales force that bypasses wholesalers and expands its operations to Europe.

1960: Pfizer sets and achieves a five-hundred-million dollar sales goal and moves its headquarters from Brooklyn to midtown Manhattan.

1995: Pfizer sheds its Food Science Group—a three-hundred-million-dollar division focused on “reduced-calorie bulking agents, fat replacers, flavors, food protectants and speciality ingredients”—and dedicates itself “exclusively” to the health care market.⁴²

Twenty-first century: As the publicly traded behemoth known for drugs like Viagra, Zithromax and Zoloft⁴³ rises to pharmaceutical superstardom, a growing number of critics voice credible accusations of “persistent criminal behav­ior,”⁴⁴ ranging from fraud and racketeering to abysmal quality control to fatal products.⁴⁵ Beginning in 2021, the brand becomes indelibly wedded in the public mind to murderous Covid injections.⁴⁶

As consumers increasingly learn to navigate the perils of Pfizer pharma, they should perhaps be grateful that the company chose to close down its involvement in the food sciences!

CITRIC ACID IN BEVERAGES

One of the reasons Pfizer experienced booming citric acid sales right from the start was that mass production of citric acid coincided with the burgeoning popularity of citric-acid-containing soft drinks such as Coca-Cola.¹⁸ As one website explains, “The sharp bite that you often get from a soft drink is often due to the addition of citric acid.”⁴⁷

Some winemakers use citric acid to acidify wines “that are too basic and as a flavor additive,” but the process has the admitted drawback of “microbial instability.”⁴⁸

Nowadays, sales of so-called “energy drinks” are booming, and in common brands, citric acid may be “the second leading ingredient following water”!5 Manufacturers who include significant amounts of citric acid in energy drinks to extend shelf life and enhance flavor generally do not disclose the fact that citric acid “directly attacks the teeth and dissolves the enamel.”⁴⁹

Homemade kombucha and other fermented beverages can provide delicious alternatives—and no synthetic citric acid needed!⁵⁰

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48. https://www.calwineries.com/learn/wine-chem­istry/wine-acids/citric-acid
49. https://energydrinkhub.com/energy-drink-with-citric-acid/
50. Morell SF. Kombucha like fine champagne. Nourishing Traditions, n.d. https://nourishing­traditions.com/kombucha-like-fine-champagne/

This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Summer 2023

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