Overview and Analysis of the Use of Food Additives

What are food additives?

Food additives are synthetic or natural substances added to food to improve its quality, color, fragrance and flavor, and to prevent spoilage, preserve freshness and facilitate processing. They include nutrients, food flavorings, base materials for gel-based sweets, and processing aids for the food industry, among others. Anything not listed in the "National Food Additive Use Standards" (GB2760) is not a food additive.

China currently approves the use of around 2000 food additives divided into 23 categories according to their function. These include preservatives, leavening agents, flavorings (essences), coloring agents (pigments), and less familiar processing aids and nutrient fortifiers. Flavorings are the most common type, with over 1000 different flavors available, followed by around 300 other types of additives.

Reasonable use

Conforming to the national standards on its usage scope and quantity, and adhering to the principles of food additives usage.

Abuse

Misuse of food additives refers to the usage beyond the scope or quantity limits set by the national standards (such as lemon yellow dye in steamed buns), or violating the principles of the use of food additives (such as marinating duck meat in essence and calling it beef or lamb).

Illegal addition

Any substance added that is not within the scope allowed by national standards is illegal (such as Sudan Red duck eggs, plasticizer drinks, melamine infant formula), or using industrial-grade products (such as industrial gelatin, industrial citric acid, industrial copper sulfate, etc.).

Are food additives necessary?

The history of food additives development is linked to the history of food industry development, which serves mainly two purposes: meeting the needs of processing technology and satisfying consumer needs in terms of taste and nutrition. The use of food additives serves the following purposes:

Maintain or improve the nutritional value of food, such as nutrient fortifiers in high-calcium biscuits or high-iron soy sauce.
Necessitating the composition of certain special dietary food, such as use of potassium bicarbonate or potassium bicarbonate acid regulator in infant formula.
Enhance the quality and stability of food, such as the antioxidant in edible oil.
Improve sensory characteristics of food, such as emulsifiers and thickeners in ice cream.
Facilitate food production, processing, packaging, transportation or storage, such as preservatives in canned meat and nitrogen in inflatable packaging.

We owe the availability of a wide variety of foods on supermarket shelves to food additives. For instance, in the pre-food industry days, people could only buy locally produced food. Foods requiring long-distance transportation or extended storage needed salting, smoking, sun-drying, or fermentation. The emergence of preservatives enabled us to transport many types of foods over long distances, and even enabled us to taste delicious food at home without leaving our doorsteps.

In the past, vegetable oils, pretzels, nuts and similar foods often had an unpleasant rancid taste. Nowadays, the use of antioxidants has significantly decreased these kinds of problems. Sweeteners such as saccharin, acesulfame and aspartame are much sweeter than sugar and can reduce food costs, lower calorie intake, and help to satisfy the craving for sweet foods in diabetics.