How many of us use saltpeter in our households especially for cooking? Is it quite safe for us to consume or there is a recommended intake?
This article is brief but informative, so read to find out the answers to things you have been wondering about.
What exactly is saltpeter?
Saltpeter is also known as potassium nitrate and it is this substance which is used to cure meat and hence serves as a preservative for other products like fish and poultry. It serves as a preservative by keeping moisture away from meat, thereby, preventing the growth of bacteria specifically those that lead to botulism.
What makes saltpeter suitable for curing meat is the reduction of the nitrate present into nitrite. It is these nitrites that allows saltpeter to fix the characteristic red colour of meat.
Apart from its use as a preservative, it is also used as a thickening agent for soups and stews. In my country Ghana for instance, saltpeter is used as a thickening agent for okra stew. It is also used to soften beans when boiling and to reduce its cooking time. This is a very common practice in my home as well. It can also be used as a special ingredient in the making of local porridge.
I’m sure some of us have probably heard that saltpeter is really harmful to our health and should not be consumed. In the next part of this article, we will look at how true this is and also if there are laws governing its usage.
Saltpeter: harmful?
Saltpeter as an additive provides us with macro nutrients such as potassium and calcium. It is beneficial to our health in the sense that it regulates fluid balance, reduces inflammation and improves digestion and muscle strength. Some of the elderly in Ghana use saltpeter for medicinal purposes because of its benefit to our health.
Despite it beneficial use as a preservative and food additive, saltpeter might be harmful to our health due to the toxic substances it might contain (Nkansah et al., 2023).The use of saltpeter as an additive is regulated by bodies such as European Union(EU) and World Health Organization(WHO). According to Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives(JEFCA), the acceptable daily intake for potassium nitrate which we know as saltpeter is 0-3.7mg/kg per day (Mortensen et al., 2017)
When saltpeter is used in very small quantities, it is less harmful however when consumed in large quantities or on a frequent basis, then it poses as a threat to our health. Since saltpeter contains macro nutrients such as calcium, when large quantities of saltpeter is consumed, it leads to an increase in the intake of calcium in the body. Calcium is a heavy metal and is also one of the most abundant metal in the body involved in functions like muscle contractions. An increase of calcium in the body however can lead to kidney stones and ischemic stroke (Nkansah et al., 2023)
Bodies like JEFCA, recommend the daily intake of calcium to be 750-800 mg/day (Nkansah et al., 2023) and considering that we might also consume other foods which contain calcium as part of our diet, the frequent and large intake of saltpeter as part of our food will let our calcium intake exceed the recommended amount.
The way forward
Saltpeter as an additive or preservative is generally not harmful to our health. It starts to pose as risk to our health when we consume it in excess. I will advise that we continue to use saltpeter as a preservative or additive in our foods since is offers certain benefits. However to ensure that we are not consuming it in excess, we should sometimes look for other alternative additive or preservative sources to serve as a balance.
References
Mortensen, A. et al. (2017) ‘Re-evaluation of sodium nitrate (E 251) and potassium nitrate (E 252) as food additives’, EFSA Journal, 15(6), pp. 1–123. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2903/j.efsa.2017.4787.
Nkansah, M.A. et al. (2023) ‘Potential health risk and bio-accessibility of metal and minerals in saltpetre (a food additive)’, Heliyon, 9(3), p. e13174. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e13174.
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