this post was submitted on 21 May 2026
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Ascorbic acid has two enantiomers. Only one of them is "vitamin C". I'm not sure if this is what she's referring to, though.
In another interview (in French, sorry), when talking about beta-carotene, she says that a substance isolated from its natural environment (other molecules, cells, etc.) and replaced with a pure, synthetic version could have very different biological properties.
Honestly, I think we still know very little about this. This research is about strong statistical associations. A lot more research is needed to understand the exact biological processes.
What about supplements? Those aren't any more natural than additives. You'd think if vitamin C were dangerous it would have been found out decades ago.
It was. High dose vitamin C is a bad idea. Americans are obsessed with any quick fixes in pill forms.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29432735/
That's interesting, and what does it have to do with preservatives, colourants, and OPs article?
AFAIK preservatives (“préservatifs”) means in French condom - as this article is related to a French Institute I am kinda inclined to inform about that 😂, not that anybody starts to worry about condoms in food.
Something to consider is differences in absorption and context. One angle is coabsorbtion, where two molecules can be absorbed better together than apart. Another is binding, such as with lectins which can bind to some micro nutrients and prevent absorption. So if you add lots of something which is not bound like it naturally would be with foods that contain it then absorption may be disregulated and you may have wildly different levels absorbed than the nutritional label would suggest.
Adding lots of vitamin C to foods because of a cosmetic or preservative function may not be the best idea given how active it is in the body. Maybe it has a similar effect in the gut to what it does in the food in the packet, killing a bunch of microbes, and therefore could impact our gut microbiome. We don't have the data yet on the mechanisms, so we should withhold judgement for now.