McDonald’s salt packets don’t just contain salt — they also contain sugar and “sodium silicoaluminate,” an anticaking agent that according to an aluminum toxicity expert, kids shouldn’t eat.

Those little packets of salt that come with McDonald’s food don’t just contain salt — they also contain sugar and “sodium silicoaluminate,” an anticaking agent that kids shouldn’t eat, according to aluminum toxicity expert Christopher Exley, Ph.D.

Exley, a professor of bioinorganic chemistry at Keele University in England, leads an Aluminum Research Group. He told The Defender:

“There really is no such thing as sodium silicoaluminate. However, those clever people working for the aluminum industry have managed to come up with all manner of terms to describe their E numbers.”

The Aluminum Association created a numbering system to refer to the many different kinds of aluminum alloys and substances that contain aluminum. Sodium silicoaluminate is E554.

“So E554,” Exley said, “is sodium aluminosilicate and it is an anticaking agent — it stops the other ingredients from sticking together to form unsightly lumps.”

He added, “Do you want to eat it? Absolutely not, it will add significantly to your body burden of aluminum,” meaning the amount of aluminum your body has been exposed to and is trying to excrete.

Exley defines the “body burden of aluminum” as “the sum of aluminium atoms associated with the body at any one moment in time.”

 

His research shows that aluminum has a biochemical effect on the body that can cause long-term health problems, including neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease.

In 2004, a study sponsored by the U.K. National Centre for Ecotoxicology & Hazardous Substances found that consuming sodium aluminosilicate in food over a two-year period was associated with “occasional growth depression” and “slight elevation of organ weights.”

However, the European Food Safety Authority’s panel on food additives and flavorings in 2020 issued a scientific report concluding there wasn’t enough toxicological data or information on the physicochemical characteristics of sodium aluminum silicate — E554 — to be able to assess its safety.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration allows sodium silicoaluminate to be added to food and regards it as safe, as long as it constitutes less than 2% of the food item to which it’s added.

Doctor speaks out about McDonald’s salt

The link between aluminum and neurodegenerative diseases recently garnered attention when Dr. Paul Saladino — a board-certified doctor “more interested in optimal health than in dogmatic adherence to a mainstream narrative” — called out McDonald’s on X for having three ingredients in its salt:

The video received a million views.

In addition to sodium silicoaluminate, McDonald’s website lists these ingredients for its salt packets:

• Salt.
• Dextrose (a form of sugar).
• Potassium iodide (an additive commonly used in the U.S. to prevent iodine deficiencies, according to the Organic Materials Review Institute).

The Defender asked Saladino — who named dextrose and sodium silicoaluminate as the only additives in McDonald’s salt — why he didn’t discuss potassium iodide, but did not receive a response by our deadline.

The Defender also discovered that the salt McDonald’s puts on its french fries, which Saladino said contains aluminum and sugar, likely does not contain the same additives as the salt packets the fast-food chain hands out with food orders.

McDonald’s website lists “salt” as the final ingredient in its french fries. The company did not respond by deadline when asked if it added ingredients to the salt mixture shaken onto its french fries.

The Defender visited a local McDonald’s restaurant in Iowa and witnessed staff shaking a box of Diamond Crystal Plain Table Salt — manufactured by Cargill — that contained salt and an anticaking agent called yellow prussiate of soda.

Yellow prussiate of soda — also known as sodium ferrocyanide — contains cyanide, but it’s not thought to be toxic because the cyanide is tightly bound to iron atoms, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

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McDonald’s one of the world’s largest toy distributors

For decades, McDonald’s has targeted families and kids.

Today, roughly 1 in every 5 sales at McDonald’s includes a Happy Meal, which the company first launched in 1979 to increase the franchise’s appeal to kids and families.

Since each Happy Meal comes with a toy, McDonald’s has become one of the world’s largest toy distributors with over 3.4 billion toys distributed annually, according to an Aug. 21 report by Investing.com.

McDonald’s didn’t respond when asked by The Defender why it adds dextrose and sodium silicoaluminate to its salt packets.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.