Subreddit: r/AskCulinary
User: u/top-infinity-cheese
Original Post:
Can I bake with d-limonene concentrates marketed as cleaners?
My Response:
Food-grade means far more about how the material was produced and not its intended use case.
There are a large number of grades for limonene, and really any chemical or extract.
Typically technical grade limonene is produced synthetically from petrochemical compounds, and while is pure enough to use in most applications, most certainly has not been verified to exclude any carcinogenic or toxic components formed as side products or as residues from the original starting point material.
Key contaminant is likely to be heavy metals in the parts per million, which wouldn’t matter for most technical applications, but would most certainly be critical for liver and kidney health. I mean, I wouldn’t even use cosmetic grade limonene for a food application, let alone the grade used for cleaners. I have no idea what other residues were in the production facility at the time, and obviously the manufacturer isn’t going to control for that because they’re not expecting anyone to eat it.
Limonene that is used as an industrial solvent most likely goes in this category. But there’s no specifications that suggest that cleaners would not be sourced from this grade of limonene. Additionally, there are likely to be additives to improve its cleaning power, even if they may not necessarily be listed as an ingredient. Whether the cleaner is meant for food applications has some very limited bearing, but there’s few regulatory oversight for this.
Food-grade limonene is typically extracted or pressed from lemon rinds. It must be extracted use a food-grade solvent that has been specified to be free from specific toxic contaminants, carcinogens, or heavy metals. So there is an actual reason for these different specifications and it does matter in terms of what you are ingesting.
You could chance it, but you can just buy limonene extract at a fairly reasonable price. I’m not sure why you would use limonene from cleaners.
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