Clean safety profile for myristic acid as a food ingredient
shown that everyday intake is well below any level that may cause
safety concerns.
The review, published in the Elsevier journal Food and Chemical Toxicology, provides useful data for companies to formulate products without any safety concerns over the ingredient. Myristic acid is a fatty acid found widely used in the food industry, myristic acid as a flavour enhancer and a multipurpose food additive, as a defoaming agent, and as a coating on fresh citrus fruits. The fatty acid is approved for food uses by the European Union and the Council of Europe (CoE), US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association (FEMA), and the joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA). "Publicly available toxicity data specific to myristic acid are limited. However, it is important to recognize, first, that myristic acid is ubiquitous in plant and animal fats commonly consumed as human foodstuffs, and two, it is a key endogenous component of human cellular biochemical machinery and adipose tissue," wrote authors George Burdock from Washington-based Burdock Group and Ioana Carabin from Florida-based Women in Science. They point out however, that the ingredient has been reported to have a low level of oral toxicity in rodents and that, in its pure form, it may be irritating to the skin and eyes under "exaggerated exposure conditions". "The lack of available relevant toxicity data specific to myristic acid precludes an exact tolerable intake for this substance; however, analogous saturated fatty acids (12-carbon lauric and 16-carbon lauric) have no observed effect level (NOEL) of greater than 5000 and 6000 mg/kg, respectively," wrote the authors. Burdock and Carabin estimated daily intakes from the diet to be 35.07 mg/day or 0.58 mg/kg of body weight/day. "Therefore, the data and information that are available indicate that at the current level of intake, food flavouring use of myristic acid does not pose a health risk to humans," stated the authors. Source: Food and Chemical Toxicology Volume 45, Issue 4, Pages 517-529 "Safety assessment of myristic acid as a food ingredient" Authors: G.A. Burdock and I.G. Carabin
