Food additives are ingredients added to improve texture, taste, appearance or shelf life. They can be harmful to health, so it’s important to know the types of additives, including sweeteners, preservatives, colors, and flavorings. Some additives, like MSG, can make people sick. It’s best to read labels and investigate additives through sites like the FDA.
Food additives are ingredients added to foods that can help improve their texture, taste, appearance or shelf life. Especially in packaged foods, you may find yourself immersed in chemical names when reading packages, as many of the ingredients can be nearly inaccurate and unrecognizable as “foods.” With awareness growing that some food additives can be harmful to your health, it helps to know a little about the types of food additives you’re likely to see on labels.
There have always been some sort of food additive, usually meant to preserve the life of foods or to add to their flavor, and sometimes used to mask the taste of rotting food. The first food additives include salt, spices, vinegar and sugar. These could preserve foods, make them tastier, and, when the spice trade was established in Europe, allowed people to freely release foods that went bad. Since food preservation has always been a concern, early humans quickly evolved ways to keep foods safe for consumption. These include not only finding safe ways to preserve food, but also finding additives that would work to keep food edible longer.
Today’s world of food additives is much more complex, but still expresses the basic ideas. Chances are you will find food additions divided into several classes. These are: additional sweeteners, preservatives, colors and flavourings. Some fit more than one category.
This is the case with additives like monosodium glutamate (MSG), which is found in a huge variety of foods. It helps make food taste better (for some), adds extra sodium, and can enhance natural flavors. The problem with MSG is that it makes some people sick. Some have food sensitivities and others may want to avoid it because it adds very high sodium content to foods. It’s a good idea to read labels for the presence of glutamates.
Sweeteners are common additives, with sugar being the most common and its companions like high fructose corn syrup. These can work to not only sweeten food and add flavor, but also to preserve the food. Sugar is a known preservative. Sometimes sweeteners aren’t preservatives. Ingredients like aspartame, saccharin and sorbitol provide sweetness without the extra calories. They actually tend to have a shorter shelf life and can develop bitterness over time.
Preservatives are probably one of the main additives. These can include things like salt and vinegar, but are more likely to come from products like nitrates, various types of sodium, and even antioxidants. Special K for example has vitamin E added as a preservative.
Other types of food additives can thicken food, such as agar or pectin, color foods, such as various food dyes, or bind foods together (emulsify) such as soy lecithin. Sometimes food has humectant additions to keep the food moist, including ingredients like sorbitol or xylene. If you’re concerned about food additives for health reasons, it’s a good idea to investigate additives through sites like the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA), to see which additives may pose health risks.
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