Beware! Canned food may damage your digestive system: Researchers

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Beware! Canned food may damage your digestive system: Researchers
Beware! Canned food may damage your digestive system: Researchers

New Delhi : Researchers have issued a warning that consumption of canned food such as corn, tuna, asparagus ot chicken may damage your digestive system.

Findings from the research showed that nanoparticles of zinc oxide used for its antimicrobial properties may negatively affect the way human digestive system works.

"We found that zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles at doses that are relevant to what you might normally eat in a meal or a day can change the way that your intestine absorbs nutrients or your intestinal cell gene and protein expression," said Gretchen Mahler, Associate Professor at the Binghamton University in the New York.

The researchers also found that the canned food contained 100 times more zinc than allowed for diet of humans.

"They tend to settle onto the cells representing the gastrointestinal tract and cause remodelling or loss of the microvilli, which are tiny projections on the surface of the intestinal absorptive cells that help to increase the surface area available for absorption," Mahler added.

This loss of surface area tends to result in a decrease in nutrient absorption.

Some of the nanoparticles also cause pro-inflammatory signaling at high doses, and this can increase the permeability of the intestinal model, the researcher said. 

The study was published in the journal Food & Function. It was done with a motive to find out how man particles might be be transferred into the canned food.

"Our model shows that the nanoparticles do have effects on our in vitro model, and that understanding how they affect gut function is an important area of study for consumer safety," Mahler said.