Friday, February 07, 2025

Is citric acid made from black mold?

Yes, but so what? That organism - Aspergillus niger - has been used to safely manufacture citric acid for about 100 years. It's also used to make most of the 'fungal enzymes' that are vegetarian-friendly. People consuming citric acid are not eating black mold; just as you're not eating bees when consuming honey. 

People worried about the fermentation process have failed to distinguish between the mold and its purified byproducts that have a long history of safe use.  https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00253-002-1032-6  

The fungus produces materials outside of its body that can be easily isolated and purified, so people are not inhaling or consuming mold when they use a material produced by fermentation. In fact, companies using citric acid perform their normal microbiological screening to assure that there are not concerning levels of mold in that material..

The mold itself would release spores that would be toxic to inhale if it were growing in your house. It may be mildly allergenic if you were eating the actual mold. But that's not what we are exposed to or are consuming when we eat citric acid, which is widely distributed in the processed food chain and has an important role in acidifying and preserving many foods and beverages. Look at your labels!

Isolated Aspergillus-derived products, including citric acid, have been sold for about a century and are considered safe. These also include common plant-derived enzymes such as protease, amylase, and lipase that are not pancreas-derived.  https://fungalbiolbiotech.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40694-018-0054-5 

"Microbial citric acid has high economic importance and widely used in beverage, food, detergents, cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries. The filamentous fungus Aspergillus niger is a work horse and important cell factory in industry for the production of citric acid."   https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33044884/

"Aspergillus niger has a long tradition of safe use in the production of enzymes and organic acids (Soares de Castro et al., 2015)."  https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/pharmacology-toxicology-and-pharmaceutical-science/aspergillus-niger#:~:text=The%20Aspergillus%20produces%20different%20types,et%20al.%2C%202015).

 

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