1. Food Additives
Chapter 24

2. Any substance a food producer intentionally adds to a food for a specific purpose.
Producers use around 3,000 additives to preserve and improve foods.
What is a Food Additive?

3. Natural: occur naturally in food or specific parts of plants. Ex
Natural: occur naturally in food or specific parts of plants. Ex. Salt and sugars
Synthetic: additives made in a laboratory. Their chemical “ingredients” are the same as any that occur in nature, but the chemicals are joined or modified in the food science lab.
Natural & Synthetic

4. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) – responsible for making sure food is safe to eat, nutritious, and honestly represented.
Delaney Clause –. states that no substance shown to cause cancer in humans or animals may be added to food
GRAS list (about 670 items) – “generally recognized as safe” – contains substances such as spices, natural seasonings, and flavorings that are considered safe for human consumption and not regulated as additives.
GRAS list
Regulating Additives

5. FDA uses food labeling to hold manufacturers accountable for additives used.
There are strict rules on how additives are identified on labels
“flavored” means natural flavorings; “artificially flavored” contains some, and possibly only synthetic flavorings.
Food labeling

6. How additives are used To improve storage properties
Increase healthfulness
Make food more appealing
Improve processing and preparation
How additives are used

7. Improving storage properties
Food suppliers need to get food items to consumers before mold and contamination ruin the product.
Common chemical preservatives include sodium nitrite, sorbic acid, sodium bisulfite, and sodium nitrate
Some natural substances that can be used as preservatives are salt, acetic acid (vinegar), sugar and spices (none are considered additives).
Improving storage properties

8. Increasing Healthfulness
Fortification: adding nutrients that are not normally found in a food.
Restoration: nutrients lost in processing are returned to the food.
Enrichment: similar to restoration, but add more nutrients than the food had before processing
Nutrification: process that adds nutrients to a food with a low nutrient/kcalorie ratio so the food can replace a nutritionally balanced meal.
Increasing Healthfulness

9. Making food more appealing
Color – some color is made from food, but most are made artificially (identified by number)
affect of food dyes on children
danger of food dyes
Flavor – most added flavors are artificial
Flavor enhancers – impart no flavor of their own, but enhance the flavor already in food
Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) is an enhancer that react allergically in some people
Making food more appealing

10. Nutritive sweeteners: metabolize to produce calories, i. e
Nutritive sweeteners: metabolize to produce calories, i.e. sucrose, brown sugar, maple syrup, molasses and honey
Sorbitol – glucose based, sugar alcohol has as many calories as sucrose, but tastes only half as sweet. Used by dieters; doesn’t metabolize as well as sucrose (used in sugarless gum)
Sweeteners

11. Sweeteners Nonnutritive sweeteners – artificial sweeteners
Sucralose – made from sugar, but is 600 times sweeter – no calories – suitable for baking
Saccharin – made from petroleum products – 300 times as sweet as sucrose – no calories - may leave bitter taste
Aspartame – 200 times sweeter than sugar – no calories – can’t be used in baked goods – loses sweetness in beverages (use-by-date)
affects of aspertame
more dangers of aspartame
Acesulfame potassium (acesulfame K) – highly stable, crystalline, calorie-free sweetener – 200 times sweeter than sugar; used in baked goods.
Sweeteners

12. Improving Processing and Preparation
Stabilizer – substance that keeps a compound, mixture, or solution from changing its form or chemical nature.
Thickeners are stabilizers that contribute smoothness or body to a food.
Both are usually natural additives
Starch based – pectin, casein, sodium caseinate, gelatin
Gum based – extracted from bushes, trees and seaweed
Buffers – used to achieve desired pH in preparing and preserving foods (citric acid, sodium citrate, lactic acid)
Improving Processing and Preparation

13. Concerns about Food Additives
Not enough is known about long-term effects of using additives
Nitrites (and nitrates)– used for centuries in cured meats; but under intense heat, react with meat to form nitrosamines which are suspected of causing cancer. However, nitrites prevent botulism (which kills)
Saccharin – “could” produce cancer in lab animals
Some have allergies to such preservatives as sulfites, MSG, and BHT
Concerns about Food Additives

14. Some fruits and vegetables are treated with a light coat of oil-based waxes – FDA approved – seals in moisture
Unnatural standards encourage people from eating what’s really good for them.
Artificial flavors may be preferred over the real thing
Unneeded Additives

15. Value of Food Additives
Safety – consumers and producers rely on additives to help ensure a safe food supply
Calcium propionate – mold inhibitor
BHT – keeps fats from going rancid
EDTA (ethylenediamine tretraacetic acid) helps prevent rancidity
Value of Food Additives

16. Value of Food Additives
Improved Nutrition – additives prevent diseases caused by malnutrition
Goiter – an enlargement of the thyroid gland caused by a lack of iodine – iodine added to table salt in 1924 to eliminate goiter
Adding Vitamin D to milk to combat rickets
Fortifying flour and cornmeal with iron and niacin reduces pellagra
Value of Food Additives

17. Value of Food Additives
Additives allow people to enjoy a more varied diet
More food is available to the people who need it
Used responsibly, chemical additives are no more dangerous than the food itself
additives allowed in organic foods
What is Xanthan Gum?
Agar Agar
Use for Agar-AgarTapioca Maltodextrin
Value of Food Additives