Food additive

One of the most used additives is salt (in the photo, Himalaya salt).

Vainilline bottles

Seeds are used Hispanic Salvia as balanced food to be able to enrich chicken eggs with Omega 3.

A food additive is a substance that, without constituting a food by itself or having nutritional value, is intentionally added to food and beverages in minimal quantities with the aim of modifying their organoleptic characteristics or facilitating or improve its manufacturing or conservation process. In this process of manufacturing improvement, a texturing is also achieved in which the processors obtain profits per weight of product.

History

Additives have long been included in food; in recent times, with the advent of food science during the 19th century and XX, an E number identifies an additive and the Scientific Committee or the European Food Safety Authority has to assess whether the additive substance is safe for health. The E-number system is also used as a practical way of labeling permitted additives in a standard way in all languages of the European Union.

According to Dr. Howard, a physician at the University of California Los Angeles, additives cannot be considered good or bad in themselves. The danger lies in the amount ingested. The ADI index (Admissible Daily Intake) indicates the amount of an additive, in relation to body weight, that can be ingested daily, throughout life, without representing an appreciable risk to health. Sometimes the cross-effects of additives are not evaluated, which can lead to harmful long-term effects.

The pharmaceutical industry has been related to that of additives, in such a way that there could be concurring interests of both industries, which in some cases are the same. It is also criticized that the additives can be used for spurious purposes, pretending to have qualities similar to those of the products that they do not use, since their incorporation would be carried out in order to save costs. Serve as an example that adding a flavoring to a yogurt would allow to incorporate less fruit while maintaining the intensity of the flavor. On the other hand, the consumer may be responsible for marketing products that incorporate certain additives, such as colorants. Thus, a strawberry jam made according to traditional methods is brownish in color. But the acceptability of strawberry jam is much greater when its color is red or bright pink, more typical of the one that incorporates colourings.

The main functions of food additives, according to European Directive 89/107/EEC, which has been transposed into the legislation of each EU member state, are:

• Secure safety and health.
• Increase product stability.
• Making food available out of carbon oxide possible.
• Ensure or maintain the nutritional value of food.
• Enhance consumer acceptance.
• Help the manufacture, transformation, preparation, transport and storage of food.
• Give homogeneity to the product.

Reasons for use

The reasons why additives are used in the food industry are basically economic and social.

The use of certain additives allows food to last longer, which means that there is a better use of them and therefore prices can be lowered and there is a more homogeneous distribution of them. For example, by adding substances to canned tomatoes that lower the pH, its duration is prolonged over time, and it can be consumed in times when tomato production decreases.

Psychological and technological reasons

When a food has a bad appearance, bad smell or some of its organoleptic properties is not seen with the characteristics that the product is usually known for, this product tends to be rejected.

Foods such as: processed fruits or vegetables, dairy products, pastries, chocolates; In general, they all require an additive that either improves their appearance (color, texture) or improves their flavor (more fruit flavor, more acidity).

If, for example, a strawberry jam had no colouring, its color would be brown instead of red. In addition, if it did not have preservatives, its useful life would be shorter.

Nutritional and safety reasons

Chemical reactions can develop in food that reduce the nutritional value of the food and even generate toxic compounds. Microorganisms that are undesirable or lethal to humans can also proliferate. A clear example is the potential presence of Clostridium botulinum in canned vegetables, a bacterium responsible for a fatal poisoning known as botulism. The addition of antioxidant substances to these preserves, such as nitrate and nitrite salts, makes it difficult for the bacteria to develop. Now, although nitrite salts are potentially toxic at certain doses or when the product is subjected to subsequent technological treatments (it is accepted that nitrite salts can be precursors of nitrosamines, carcinogenic substances that are formed when food is subjected to roasting or baking), this risk is much lower than the risk of botulism if antioxidant additives and artificial colors were not incorporated

Types of additives

The general classification of food additives can be:

• Substances that prevent biological chemical alterations (antioxidants, synergists of antioxidants and preservatives).
• Stabilizing substances of physical characteristics (emulgents, thickeners, gelifying, anti-foaming, anti-foaming, anti-aglutinants, moisturizers, pH regulators).
• Corrective substances of plastic qualities. (Bread improvers, vinification corrections, maturation regulators).
• Modifying substances of organoleptic characters (colorants, flavor enhancers, artificial sweeteners, aromas).

There are categories of additives for their use in the food industry, among them we have:

• Aromatizers: substances that provide flavor to food, modifying their organoleptic characteristics and making them more sweet, aggrieved, salty, acid.
• Colorants: every chemical capable of providing dyes, used to give color to textile, cosmetic and food products.
• Conservatives: chemical substance used as a food additive that, added to food, stops or minimizes the deterioration caused by the presence of different types of microorganisms (bacteria, yeasts and molds).
• Antioxidants: molecule capable of delaying or preventing oxidation of other molecules. Oxidation is a chemical reaction to transfer electrons from a substance to an oxidant agent.
• Binders: additive substance that is usually included in certain foods with the aim of modifying its acidity, modifying or strengthening its flavor. For example, drinks are usually added with the purpose of modifying the sweetness sensation produced by sugar.
• Sweeteners: any substance, natural or artificial, that sweetens, that is, that serves to give sweet flavor to a food or product that otherwise has bitter or unpleasant flavor.
• Thickness: substances that when added to a mixture, increase their viscosity without substantially modifying their other properties like the flavor.
• Derived from starch: they come from the artificial generation of compounds with some of the properties of starch, this is a food additive based on its properties of interaction with water and, very especially, on the formation capacity of gels, often related to the property of culinary aglutinant.
• Flavors: prepared of substances that contain the saty-aromatic principles, extracted from nature (vegetal) or artificial substances, for use allowed in legal terms, able to act on the senses of taste and smell, but not exclusively, either to strengthen one's own (inherent of food) or to convey a particular flavor and/or aroma, in order to make it more appetizing or pleasant.
• Emulsifiers: substance that helps in mixing two substances that are usually not miscible or difficult to mix.

Guaranteed food that does not contain additives by law (Spain)

The fact that they do not contain additives means that they are not added during manufacturing. Therefore, they can contain the same substances considered as additives by themselves.

Animal origin of some food additives

Animal-derived additives

Additives of possible animal origin