BHT

BHT stops fat going rancid. Oxidation is what makes an old crisp taste of cardboard and an old cereal taste of nothing, and an antioxidant added at a fraction of a percent delays it for months.

It is on this site for a reason that has little to do with what it does. BHT is one of the most commonly cited examples of an ingredient “banned in Europe”, and it is not banned in Europe.

The correction, stated plainly

BHT is permitted in the European Union as food additive E321. It has an E number, which is what an EU authorisation looks like, and an E number is not a warning label.

In the United States it is listed as generally recognised as safe, with a specific ceiling: it may be used “when the total content of antioxidants is not over 0.02 percent of fat or oil content, including essential (volatile) oil content of food”.

Note how that limit is written. Not a percentage of the food, but of the fat in the food. A cereal that is 2 percent fat gets a very small absolute allowance, and the rule scales itself to the thing the antioxidant is actually protecting.

Two jurisdictions, both permitting it, both with conditions. There is no ban to explain.

Why the claim spreads anyway

Because it sounds like the true ones, and some of the true ones are about ingredients that look similar.

BHA is the near neighbour and it has a genuinely different file: it is listed by the National Toxicology Program as reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen, on the basis of forestomach tumours in rodents. BHA and BHT are used in the same products, often together, and their names differ by one letter.

That is enough for a claim about one to attach itself to the other. It is worth knowing that the two are not interchangeable and that the more serious file belongs to the one with the A.

This is the fourth category on the page about ingredients banned somewhere else: the claim that is simply not true, travelling in the company of claims that are.

What is actually worth knowing

The residual questions about BHT concern high-dose animal studies and are not settled in the way either its defenders or its critics usually suggest. The regulatory position in both major markets is permission with a limit, and neither has moved recently.

If you would rather avoid synthetic antioxidants, the alternative is on the same shelf: Tocopherols, which is vitamin E doing the same job less efficiently and at higher cost. Many products now use mixed tocopherols for exactly this reason, and some use both.

In cosmetics

BHT appears in cosmetics too, protecting the oils in a formula from going off. The concentrations are low and the reasoning is the same as in food: an unprotected oil phase turns, and a turned product is a worse problem than the antioxidant preventing it.