Toxicity/harmfulness of food stabilisers in large quantities

[Anaximenes]

Hi all,

Firstly, I do hope I've posted in the right forum - being something of a biology rookie I wasn't quite sure under which category this question might fall, but since it has to do with human biology I'm hoping I've posted correctly. Sincere apologies if I haven't!

Anyway, I'm interested to know if anybody has information regarding the level of consumption at which food stabilisers such as Sodium Triphosphate, Disodium Diphosphate and Sodium Polyphosphate - these three are all found in the lunch meats I've been eating - become dangerous or harmful.

Obviously they're safe for consumption in small enough quantities or they wouldn't be permitted in the food, but what complicates this is that I've been consuming roughly 1000 grams of these lunch meats per day as part of a pseudo-paleolithic/bodybuilding diet-variant of my own devising.

So, is the fact that I have around 10 times the 'normal' intake of Sodium Triphosphate, etc., per day a cause for concern? Some uneducated Googling by me has turned up various "harmful" and "toxic" designations on these substances, but I assume this refers to much larger quantities than are found in the food. The question is, how much larger?

P.S. For the record, the three substances I'm looking into appear to be the E-numbers E450, E451 and E452. Obviously there's a lot of hate for E-numbers in certain health circles, but not wanting to be distracted by hype or unfounded condemnation of them, I decided to seek the advice of a better informed biology crowd who hopefully have a more capable command of the facts of the matter in strictly biological terms (you guys! )

Thanks,
- Jim

[MichaelXY]

http://books.google.com/books?id=nC7OGh ... 1-PA410,M1

Hmm, sounds like STP is a way to add water weight via water retention, to products. So price per oz. means your buying more water. Also reported to make food taste worse. FDA list STP as safe, but I dunno what level becomes toxic.

One more thing, the extra sodium probably is not good.

Stay tuned for better responses

[Anaximenes]

http://books.google.com/books?id=nC7OGhzZn5YC&pg=RA1-PA409&lpg=RA1-PA409&dq=Sodium+Triphosphate+FDA&source=web&ots=i-eTekzzU3&sig=w93YMAmcePcdNnN2G56_7WREvNw&hl=en#PRA1-PA410,M1

Hmm, sounds like STP is a way to add water weight via water retention, to products. So price per oz. means your buying more water. Also reported to make food taste worse. FDA list STP as safe, but I dunno what level becomes toxic.

One more thing, the extra sodium probably is not good.

Stay tuned for better responses

Thanks for the info Michael, that's interesting to know about the water retention - a bit of a scam, but by itself I'd hopefully imagine extra water wouldn't have detrimental health effects...

As for the increased sodium intake, that's a good point which I hadn't thought of, but I'm hoping it's being offset by the absence of other traditional salt/sodium sources in my present diet (I've eschewed, amongst other things, bread, and "snack" foods such as crisps/chips and chocolate, so my basic sodium intake must be pretty low).