This post series on botanical ingredient adulteration is inspired by the excellent work coming out of the Botanical Adulterants Prevention Program (BAPP) by the American Botanical Council (ABC), continuing today with:
➡️ Grapefruit seed extract (GFSE), which is a preparation derived from the seeds of Citrus paradisi. It is marketed primarily for purported antimicrobial and preservative effects. However, the BAPP bulletin notes that grapefruit seed and its preparations do not have a documented history of use for infectious disease in traditional herbal medicine systems such as Traditional Chinese Medicine or Ayurveda.
Adulteration, in the regulatory sense, means a product is unsafe or of inferior quality because it fails to meet legal standards for purity, strength, or composition (including contamination).
Economic adulteration is emphasized in these posts: intentional substitution, dilution, or undeclared additions that misrepresent a botanical’s true identity or quality compared to what the label and consumer would reasonably expect. Accidental adulteration is also present in some species.
For more detailed information on adulterants in botanicals, see the BAPP publications, which are freely available on their website.