Natural Preservatives for Food, Beverages, and Beauty. What Are the Options?

Preservatives, particularly for foods, have been around many thousands of years. For nearly all of recorded history, humankind has sought strategies for keeping foods safe and edible for longer periods of time. Some of the earliest food preservatives were salt, sugar, vinegar, and spices. Modern food preservatives include such chemical compounds as benzoates, nitrates, sulphites, and sorbic acid.
The shared goal of all food preservation efforts (and those for cosmetics and some pharmaceuticals as well) is to create an environment that is unwelcoming to such microorganisms as molds, yeast, and bacteria. An additional purpose of preservation, says PLT Health Solutions’ senior food technologist Shadi Riazi, PhD, is to retain “the natural characteristics of food.” Shaheen Majeed, marketing director, Sabinsa, adds that preservatives must be “safe and stable, and must not disturb the flavor and palatability of foods.”
Increasingly, natural preservatives are meeting these myriad preservation requirements as consumer demand for minimally processed and clean-label products increases. “Any safe and non-synthetic compound derived from natural sources-animal, plant, microbial-with the ability to enhance the shelf life of food products and retard their deterioration can be considered a natural food preservative,” Riazi says.
Some of the most popular and effective natural preservatives available include rosemary extract, neem oil, citrus oils, citric acid, grapeseed extract, and buffered vinegar.
Sabinsa’s Majeed points to strong demand for natural preservatives in cosmetics and cosmeceuticals as well as in foods. “Most cosmetic products contain good water content, fatty acids, and carbohydrates, which makes them a rich medium for growth of bacteria, fungi, and several microbes. This creates a need for preservatives to prevent spoilage of the cosmetic product as well as skin infections [in the consumer].” Majeed points to a number of preservatives for cosmetics and cosmeceuticals that are of natural origin and “not synthetically manufactured,” including essential oils and such plant extracts as rosemary, cinnamon, coleus, and tea tree.
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