In research done by Professor Peter Piper at Sheffield University, the common preservative, Sodium Benzoate, may wreck havoc on your DNA. In an interview with the British newspaper The Independent, Dr. Piper tested the effect of the preservative found in most soft drinks on the DNA of yeast. What he found shocked him. “These chemicals have the ability to cause severe damage to DNA in the mitochondria to the point that they totally inactivate it: they knock it out altogether.The mitochondria consumes the oxygen to give you energy and if you damage it – as happens in a number if diseased states – then the cell starts to malfunction very seriously. And there is a whole array of diseases that are now being tied to damage to this DNA – Parkinson’s and quite a lot of neuro-degenerative diseases, but above all the whole process of ageing.”

While the food industry will undoubtedly come out and tell you that sodium benzoate is safe and has been tested for years, what they won’t tell you is that they have not tested any of these additives when it comes to their affect on DNA. This type of testing is available using microarray technology but I can guarantee unless they are forced to do so via pressure from the government, it won’t be done.

So what’s a person to do?  First you can test your levels of benzoic acid through a urine organic acid test available from US Biotek or Metametrix (make sure they have benzoate as not all their panels contain it). You will need a doctor’s signature for that but if they are unwilling, you can buy the test from Direct Lab Services and their physician will sing the form for you. Don’t forget to ask for the Bio-Clarity Report in order to get a more complete picture of your test results.

One thing you can do safely is to take one gram of the amino acid glycine twice a day (unless you have Parkinson’s disease). That will bind up the glycine, create hippuric acid which then gets urinated out.