Citric acid is manufactured from black mould and is deliberately hidden in food to poison people.
It’s true that citric acid can be produced from a fungus that causes a type of black mould on fruit, but it is generally recognised as safe. There’s no evidence it is being used to harm the population.
A Facebook post claims to reveal a “hidden fact” that citric acid is in fact poison put in food to reduce the “population’s vitality”.
The post, which has almost 2,000 shares, says: “When the words ‘citric acid’ appear on a food ingredient list, many believe it comes from limes or lemons. The truth is that citric acid is in fact poison and comes from genetically modified black mold. This is not by accident. Hiding known toxins in food for the masses to consume is actually a form of spiritual warfare carried out by evil forces in a direct attempt to lowers [sic] the population’s vitality and natural vibrational frequency.”
Citric acid is a common additive used for flavouring and preserving food and drink. It’s often found in processed products, including soft drinks, wine, canned food and ice creams. It’s also used in supplements, medicines and cleaning products.
While citric acid is naturally found in citrus fruits, such as lemons, limes and oranges, it is expensive to extract it from these directly, and so due to high demand citric acid is also industrially manufactured.
The post is correct to suggest citric acid is manufactured by the fermentation of a fungus called Aspergillus niger, which is what causes black mould on the surface of some fruits such as grapes and apricots. However, there’s no evidence that citric acid is being used to poison the population.
This fungus is used because it produces a lot of citric acid at low pH levels without producing any toxic by-products.
Citric acid has been approved for use in the UK by the Food Standards Agency, but it notes that “most additives are only permitted to be used in certain foods and are subject to specific quantitative limits”. The US Food and Drug Administration says citric acid is “generally recognized as safe” in food.
Consuming too much citric acid can risk wearing away tooth enamel, and some experts have called for more research into the effects of manufactured citric acid.
This is not the first time we’ve written about this claim—it circulated online in September 2021.
You can find more of our work checking health misinformation on our website, including our fact checks on the unevidenced claim that lab-grown meat causes ‘turbo-cancer’ and whether high cholesterol prevents heart attacks.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as partly false because while it is industrially produced using a type of black mould, there’s no evidence of a plot to deliberately hide citric acid in food to poison the population.
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