An Introduction to Surfactants: The Secret Ingredient Powering Your Functional Beverages
As the old saying goes, "Oil and water do not mix." Yet, the refrigerator at your favorite retailer is filled with cans of hemp beverages with only a handful of ingredients — water, flavor, and, of course, a shot of hemp extract. But the problem here is that none of these would actually help an oily hemp extract mix with a water-based beverage.
Shouldn't these labels tell you what's in your favorite hemp drink, allowing oily extractions to blend beautifully into a tasty hemp-infused liquid?
Welcome to the world of surfactants. These are ingredients widely used across the food and beverage industries, but you may never see them listed on the label.
Mixing Oil and Water: Why We Need Surfactants
You wouldn't be the only person who has never heard of a surfactant. Surfactants help two naturally phobic ingredients blend — emulsify — into a homogeneous end product.
What does phobic mean here? Returning to our oil and water example, oils are naturally hydro-phobic compounds. Broken down into the basic components of the word:
Hydro means water
Phobic means fear or horror
Combined, hydrophobic is a term that describes how oily compounds are extremely averse to mixing with water or, put another way, are non-water-soluble.
But consumer products are filled with formulations that somehow manage to make two diametrically adverse ingredients play nice with one another, including that CBD drink sitting in your fridge.
Enter surfactants.
phosphatidylcholine, a major phospholipid class in lecithin
A Brief Introduction to Surfactants
Surfactants—short for surface active agents—are a class of chemical compounds that are bipolar. Bipolarity in molecular science means the molecule has two polarities. In the context of surfactants, it means compounds that contain both water-soluble AND fat-soluble parts within the same molecule.
This unique property allows surfactants to surround a small fat bubble while encouraging it to coexist in a water-based environment. In our example, that means the surfactants in your CBD Seltzer surround the oily CBD molecules to suspend them in the water-based formulation.
Natural vs. Artificial Surfactants
Surfactants can be naturally or artificially derived. Natural surfactants include substances like lecithin, a compound called a phospholipid, which is predominantly found in eggs.
Egg lecithin is what makes eggs a go-to "binder" in the kitchen. If you've ever emulsified anything, perhaps a homemade mayonnaise, you're already familiar with surfactants — even if you didn't know the technical term.
Artificial surfactants include, among many others, a group of ingredients called Polysorbates (ex: Polysorbate 20, Polysorbate 60, and Polysorbate 80). These are synthetic non-ionic surfactants, which are derived through a synthetic process from sorbitol (a sugar alcohol). They are emulsifiers, solubilizers, and dispersants found in everything from dairy products like yogurts and ice creams to processed meats like sausages and salamis.
Are Surfactants Safe? The Toxicology of Surfactants
While we'd love to say that all the surfactants used in the food and beverage industry are always safe for human consumption, unfortunately, nothing is ever that simple.
First, the good news: Chefs and food scientists have identified many naturally occurring surfactants, like saponins or plant-based gums (ex, gum arabic). And these, like egg lecithin, appear to be exceedingly safe for humans to ingest. Natural surfactants do not appear to disrupt the cells lining your gut or lead to any acute or chronic health effects when used according to established food-safety limits.
But what about artificial surfactants? Artificial or synthetic surfactants usually perform better than natural surfactants. They are also often cheaper.
Yes, there are a number of artificial surfactants that have been evaluated and deemed generally recognized as safe (GRAS) for use in food and beverages in specific quantities. However, other synthetic surfactants are also GRAS but are associated with negative health impacts, at least based on discoveries made in recent research.
In these studies, data has suggested that artificial surfactants may act as endocrine disruptors (1), immunotoxicants (2), or obesogens (3,4), especially with long-term exposure. These concerns have not yet been proven. Ongoing studies are evaluating these potential toxicological issues.
As soon as you start looking for these ingredients on food and beverage labels, you'll be surprised to find surfactants exist in many more products than you might expect. It's always a good idea to limit your exposure to surfactants, especially in larger quantities. But with surfactants in so many consumer packaged goods, the only resource consumers have is to read product labels with a watchful eye.
Realistically, you might not be able to cut them out altogether, but at least you can begin to monitor, manage the exposure, and then reduce the risks.
The Surfactant Dilemma in Hemp Drinks: Transparency Issues on Labels
If you're in the business of formulating hemp beverages, you'll know all too well just how important surfactants are to the final product. But what happens when a growing consumer base starts to consider surfactants undesirable—an unhealthy ingredient that is best avoided?
Already, many hemp and cannabis beverage companies are trying to solve this increasing anti-surfactant sentiment by simply deleting the recognizable surfactants from the ingredient list altogether.
But we know mixing (hemp) oil and water is impossible without surfactants. So, does this mean they've found a novel solution to the formulation issue? Or are these companies using legal loopholes to hide something from the consumer?
As it turns out, there are actually a few regulatory exemptions that allow manufacturers to NOT list ingredients on the label. One exemption is called the "incidental additive." An incidental additive is a substance present in an ingredient that does not serve a function in the finished product AND is present only at an "insignificant" level.
For example, if an antioxidant is used to keep an oil from going rancid, but that antioxidant does not act as an antioxidant in any meaningful way in the salad dressing made with that oil, then the antioxidant is an incidental additive and does not have to be listed on the salad dressing's label (see the applicable food regulation in 21 CFR 101.100).
Today, there are brands that believe consumers want hemp beverages but those same consumers won’t accept the surfactants needed to make them. So, these hemp beverage manufacturers inappropriately use the incidental additive rule to rationalize not listing a surfactant even though the surfactant is absolutely necessary for the product.
But, this is a false application of the regulation, and it means hemp beverage brands are lying on their label by purposefully omitting the existence of surfactants in their formulation.
The Legislation is Clear: Surfactants Must Be Listed
Yet, this isn't the full legal picture. Suppose a manufacturer uses a surfactant as an ingredient, AND that substance also functions as a surfactant in the finished product. In this case, that substance must be declared in the ingredient list, no matter how little may be in the finished product.
Clearly stating all the ingredients on the label is the safe and ethical thing to do, especially for those consumers who may be actively trying to avoid specific ingredients. An undisclosed surfactant represents a consumer health risk and an ethical quandary for those who knowingly withhold that information from consumers.
Read Between the Lines: What's Really in Your Hemp Beverage?
We encourage everyone to dive deeper into what's on the label. If there are no listed surfactants in a hemp beverage, you may want to ask questions of the manufacturer and insist that they in turn ask questions of their suppliers if need be.
Spoke Sciences believes in science-driven minimization of surfactant levels to achieve superior products. With advanced techniques, we have greatly reduced the need for surfactants, often using one-tenth or less the quantity used by other popular approaches.
We have discovered new uses for other established food-grade ingredients that help surfactants work better. Spoke's growing patent portfolio covers these new uses, which have the potential to revolutionize healthier, better-tasting consumer products.
Spoke places functional surfactants clearly on our product labels and requires our ingredient customers to do the same. Spoke believes that the best way to solve a consumer concern is to actually address it, not to sweep it under the rug.
For more about Spoke Sciences, please visit www.spokesciences.com
Footnotes:
Endocrine disruptors or endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are substances that interfere with the normal function of your body’s endocrine system. Some EDCs act like "hormone mimics" and trick our body into thinking that they are hormones, while other EDCs block natural hormones from doing their job.
Any substance that causes a toxic effect on the immune system. In particular, immunotoxicants can lead to hypersensitivity, inappropriate enhancement, immunosuppression, or autoimmunity.
Obesogens disrupt normal development and the balance of lipid metabolism, which in some cases, can lead to obesity.
Salame C, Javaux G, Sellem L, et al. Food additive emulsifiers and the risk of type 2 diabetes: analysis of data from the NutriNet-Santé prospective cohort study. Lancet Diabetes Endocrinol. 2024 May;12(5):339-349. doi: 10.1016/S2213-8587(24)00086-X. PMID: 38663950.