Citric acid is a common additive because of its many benefits and minimal environmental impact. The three main industries that use citric acid are food, cosmetics, and cleaning products. Citric acid acts as a preservative in many processed foods, keeping them fresh. It does this by slowing or helping prevent the formation of bacteria, mold, yeast, and fungus.
This delays how quickly food spoils, increasing its shelf life. Additionally, it can help balance the pH level, or acidity, of a food or beverage. For example, when manufacturers add citric acid to wine, it improves low acidity and taste. Citric acid provides many benefits when added to skincare products.
It can brighten skin, minimize fine lines, and even skin tone. Manufacturers also use citric acid as an additive in hairspray, deodorant, and body spray. It preserves cosmetics and personal care products to ensure they do not grow mold, bacteria, or fungus. Because citric acid is effective at killing harmful bacteria , it is a beneficial addition to cleaning products.
It also has brightening properties that are useful for stain removal. Manufacturers commonly use alpha-hydroxy acids AHAs in skin care products because of their resurfacing properties. As citric acid is a common form of AHA , it can benefit the skin. Individuals with dark spots, hyperpigmentation, or scars may find citric acid particularly beneficial.
Dark spots are areas of skin with higher amounts of melanin , and scars are areas of collagen fibers that form scar tissue. The scar tissue has a different texture and appearance than the rest of the skin.
When used on the skin, AHAs peel small layers of the skin away. Over time, this can remove all hyperpigmentation and scarring, leaving behind skin with a more even tone. As a person ages, the collagen and elastin in the skin break down. As a result, skin does not bounce back the way it used to, resulting in fine lines and wrinkles.
They usually emerge in places where the skin moves a lot, such as around the eyes and forehead. AHAs increase the synthesis of glycosaminoglycans , a type of complex carbohydrate that plays a role in cell hydration and communication. They also thicken the skin, which helps prevent new fine lines from appearing. Learn more about AHAs. Citric acid has a pH level of between 3—6.
This means it is a relatively weak acid. The pH scale spans 0—14 , with 7 being neutral. Citric acid is a concentrated powder that is prized for its sour flavor, preservative quality, and ability to act as a pH buffer.
For these reasons, citric acid is found on the ingredients list of many foods in your kitchen pantry, including preserves, candy , and crunchy snacks. It is also known as "sour salt" due to its flavor and similar appearance and texture to salt. In , American food chemist James Currie discovered that the mold Aspergillus niger could produce citric acid as a byproduct of metabolizing sucrose or glucose, which has proved more efficient and less expensive than extracting from citrus fruits.
Although citric acid is found in high concentrations in many citrus fruits like lemons, it is not economical to extract the acid from fruit for industrial use. Plus, the demand for citric acid far outweighs the supply of citrus fruit available. Thus, once it was possible to produce a seemingly endless supply of citric acid, companies like Pfizer and Citrique Belge began manufacturing it on an industrial scale.
Citric acid has many uses in food production. It is a flavor enhancer, preservative, and helps facilitate the ripening process. The acidic pH of citric acid makes it useful as a food preservative and preserves the color of the food since it significantly slows the oxidation.
Since many bacteria are unable to grow in an acidic environment, citric acid is often added to jams, jellies, candy, canned foods, and even meat products as a form of preservation. Citric acid is also used to facilitate the ripening process when making cheese , particularly mozzarella. It is employed to adjust the pH of solutions when brewing both beer and wine, and works to keep fats from separating in homemade ice cream; it also prevents sugar from crystallizing in caramels.
A small pinch of citric acid can also enhance the leavening power of baking soda, making it an ideal secret ingredient for cakes and biscuits. Those on a low-sodium diet may sub in citric acid for salt when seasoning. Citric acid can be measured and added to recipes either as an ingredient or as a replacement for other acids like lemon juice or vinegar.
The citric acid powder can also be sprinkled over finished recipes such as guacamole or raw fruit such as apples, to maintain color. If making cheese like ricotta or paneer , citric acid will guarantee a perfect balance of acidity without adding any additional flavors. This is created from—wait for it—black mold. And yes, stealth black mold in everything from your booze to your chicken stock certainly sounds terrifying, but should it be? First, the good news: There are benefits to consuming foods that contain naturally occurring citric acid from, say, lemon or lime juice because it acts as an antioxidant, meaning it protects the body from damaging free radicals.
Eating ample antioxidants helps with everything from heart health to cancer prevention. By re-stabilizing the acidic environment often caused by too many processed foods and triple-shot lattes and too much stress, your body can work more efficiently.
Also noteworthy? Because of its alkalizing powers, there's even some evidence that citric acid may help prevent certain types of kidney stones , which can thrive in high-acidity urine. If you feed certain sugars like corn starch and sugar beets to the fungus Aspergillus niger a common black mold , you end up with the artificial form of citric acid. It's a cheap, easy way to produce a food additive. But is it unhealthy?
Ultimately, the black mold is filtered out, but some people believe the mycotoxins microscopic waste products left behind by the fungus aren't entirely eliminated. Wellness experts worry that ingesting or inhaling these on the reg can be problematic because mold and mycotoxins have been tied to respiratory issues, allergies, and even chronic illness. Vila warns that citric acid in beauty and cleaning products has the potential to be an irritant and trigger asthma symptoms.
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