this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2026
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I've not had any food with synthetic emulsifiers for more than 5 years now, no gut trouble to speak of, so it works for me at least.
Have you had garlic, eggs, chickpeas or mustard in that time? Because if so, you’ve had emulsifiers. Milk, butter, and mayonnaise are all technically emulsions, so they’re super widespread in people's diets. (I’m not trying to be shitty, I can see how this paragraph sounds accusatory, but it’s not, I just can’t figure out how to make it sound neutral)
I try to avoid super processed foods for much of my diet, but I do eat smoked tofu regularly and occasionally have a piece of candy. But avoiding all emulsifiers would require a much more significant overhauling of my diet.
It's all good, I realised that too before your reply and edited my post with the word synthetic to make it clear that I have indeed had eggs and butter.
That sounds a lot easier to follow, because that reading up on them, they’re in everything. That makes sense, given that all cell membranes have a phospholipid bilayer that seems like it should technically act as an emulsifier, if I’m understanding it correctly (I’m very proud of the fact that I wrote that from memory after almost 20 years since my last biology class and the only thing I had to change after double checking on Wikipedia was “cell walls” to “cell membranes,” because I forgot animals don’t have cell walls).