Nutrition November 6, 2025 0 Comments

Is Your Beloved Bragg’s Liquid Aminos Hiding a Dangerous Chemical You Need to Know About?

Ever wondered what lurks behind the savory allure of your favorite soy sauce or those seemingly innocent liquid aminos? Well, buckle up, because the story of chlorohydrins—a sneaky contaminant discovered way back in 1978—is not your average food chemistry tale. These compounds show up when proteins in foods like soy sauce are broken down using high heat, pressure, and hydrochloric acid—a process that sounds like a chemistry lab experiment more than a kitchen staple. But here’s the kicker: if any residual fats are hanging around, they can morph into chlorohydrins, toxic troublemakers notorious for wreaking havoc on animal kidneys and fertility. Imagine a chemical once eyed as a potential male contraceptive, only to be scrapped after primates showed “unacceptable side effects”! It’s a bit unsettling that despite decades passing and 3-MCPD being tagged “a worldwide problem of food chemistry,” we still lack long-term human studies. So how do regulators figure out what’s safe? They lean on animal data, throw in safety buffers, and concoct tolerable intake levels—but there’s a twist: the U.S. and Europe don’t quite agree on the limits, with the U.S. being way more lenient. Intriguingly, 3-MCPD isn’t just in hydrolyzed vegetable proteins—it sneaks into refined oils and thus into a whole bunch of greasy favorites, from donuts to French fries, sometimes in scary amounts. So, next time you reach for that soy sauce bottle or grab a snack, you might want to pause and ponder just what’s seasoning your food—and how much of that invisible chemical hitchhiker you’re inviting to your table. LEARN MORE

Chlorohydrin contaminates hydrolyzed vegetable protein products and refined oils.

In 1978, chlorohydrins were found in protein hydrolysates. What does that mean? Proteins can be broken down into amino acids using a chemical process called hydrolysis, and free amino acids (like glutamate) can have taste-enhancing qualities. That’s how inexpensive soy sauce and seasonings like Bragg’s Liquid Aminos are made. This process requires high heat, high pressure, and hydrochloric acid to break apart the protein. The problem is that when any residual fat is exposed to these conditions, it can form toxic compounds called chlorohydrins, which are toxic at least to mice and rats.

Chlorohydrins like 3-MCPD are considered “a worldwide problem of food chemistry,” but no long-term clinical studies on people have been reported to date. The concern is about the detrimental effects on the kidneys and fertility. In fact, there was a time 3-MCPD was considered as a potential male contraceptive because it could so affect sperm production, but research funding was withdrawn after “unacceptable side effects [were] observed in primates.” Researchers found flaccid testes in rats, which is what they were going for, but it caused neurological scars in monkeys.

What do you do when there are no studies in humans? How do you set some kind of safety factor? It isn’t easy, but you can take the lowest observed adverse effect level (LOAEL) in animal studies, which, in this case, was kidney damage, add in some kind of fudge factor, and then arrive at an estimated tolerable daily intake (TDI). For 3-MCPD, this means that high-level consumers of soy sauce may exceed the limit. This was based on extraordinarily high contamination levels, though. Since that study, Europe introduced a regulatory limit of 20 parts per billion (ppb) of 3-MCPD in hydrolyzed vegetable protein products like liquid aminos and soy sauce. The U.S. standards are much laxer, though, setting a “guidance level” of up to 50 times more, 1,000 parts per billion.

I called Bragg’s to see where it fell, and the good news is that it is doing an independent, third-party analysis of its liquid aminos for 3-MCPD. The bad news is that, despite my pleas that it be fully transparent, Bragg’s wouldn’t let me share the results with you. I have seen them, though, but I’m only allowed to confirm they comfortably meet the U.S. standards but fail to meet the European standards.

This is just the start of the 3-MCPD story, though. A study in Italy tested individuals’ urine for 3-MCPD or its metabolites, and 100% of the people turned up positive, confirming that it’s “a widespread food contaminant.” But 100% of people aren’t consuming soy sauce or liquid aminos every day. Remember, the chemical results from a reaction with residual vegetable oil. When vegetable oil itself is refined, when it’s deodorized and bleached, those conditions also lead to the formation of 3-MCPD.

Indeed, we’ve known for years that various foods are contaminated. In what kinds of foods have these kinds of chemicals been detected? Well, if they’re in oils and fats, then they’re in greasy foods made from them: margarine, baked goods, pastries, deep-fried foods, fatty snacks like potato and corn chips, as well as infant formula.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s limit for soy sauce is 1,000 ppb, but donuts can have more than 1,200 ppb, salami more than 1,500 ppb, ham nearly 3,000 ppb, and French fries in excess of 6,000 ppb, as seen here and at 4:03 in my video The Side Effects of 3-MCPD in Bragg’s Liquid Aminos.

Most of us don’t have to worry about this problem, unless we’re consumers of fried food. Someone weighing about 150 pounds, for example, who eats 116 grams of donuts, would exceed the European Food Safety Authority’s TDI, even if those donuts were the person’s only source of exposure. That’s about two donuts, but the same limit-blowing amount of 3-MCPD could be found in only five French fries.

Doctor’s Note

Believe me, I pleaded with the Bragg’s folks over and over. It’s curious to me that Bragg’s allowed me to talk about where its level of 3-MCPD fell compared to the standards but not say the number itself. At least it’s doing third-party testing.

Learn more about this topic in my video 3-MCPD in Refined Cooking Oils.

You can also check out Friday Favorites: The Side Effects of 3-MCPD in Bragg’s Liquid Aminos and Refined Cooking Oils.