Food Additives
Welcome! This site can be easily viewed with a PDA or a mobile phone. If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
How harmful or helpful are additives?
This photograph shows typical additives in a microwave meal. The yellow, red, and orange colourings are quite noticable.
Additives have been around for a long time, starting with the very basic salting and smoking fish and meat.
Pickling with vinegar is another example. As tinned produce became fashionable vitamins ‘C’ ascorbic acid was used to help prevent tinned fruit and fruit juice from turning brown. However in the last 50 years more and more additives have been put into food until now there are over 3000 different substances which can be added. Quite worrying really, because nearly all these substances only need to be described in general terms by the manufacturers who use them.
Some of these additives simply enhance the colour of food to make it more appealing, but even some of these colourings can cause reactions yellow tartrazine being one. Now I don’t know about you, but I find the whole situation quite worrying.
It surely can’t be coincidental that over the last 50 years more and more people are beginning to suffer from food allergies, or when during the same period more and more additives are being put into food. If you look at the basic preservatives and antioxidants, there doesn’t seem a great problem there, but as you move into the colourings and the flavour enhancers, you start to see information which states some of these colourings may cause allergic reactions such as wheeziness or hyperactivity. Currently the opinion would appear to be that food additives are safe and numerous additives have been approved for use within the European Union.
However there do seem to be the exceptions. E102 the additive yellow tartrazine in particular it is linked to adverse reactions in people who are aspirin intolerant or asthmatic. Intolerant individuals may have itching, hives, running noses, or even asthma as a reaction. Is it any wonder that farm shops and fresh natural produce sales are becoming popular as people seek to limit the amount of additives in their food.
This free application contains list of food additives by e-number or by name telling you which to avoid. Also additives that children, asthmatics, vegetarians and people with health problems should avoid. Scroll to the bottom of the page after clicking on the following link.
Other related posts:
