Additives And Preservatives In Food

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Additives and Preservatives in Foods Roxane Caudron Making food taste good and preventing it from spoiling have been concerns of mankind since the beginning of history. Using additives and preservatives is one of the various current methods used to resolve this issue and are a major part of today’s food supply anywhere in the world. Using preservatives means that all year, we are provided with tasty but perhaps questionably safe food products. This essay considers certain methods employed to keep our food fresh and full of flavour, focusing particularly on the addition of preservatives to food products to keep them from spoiling and on the use of additives to improve taste or texture. Simply defined, Preservatives are what preserve food, for example by preventing decaying of the food matter. Although they are closely related, additives aren’t the same thing as preservatives; they are added to a food with a certain aim or function centered on improving the food- usually by changing texture, appearance or taste. There are several different types of additives and preservatives, but either way, unless you are purchasing products with the label “Bio” or “organic” on it, then you are definitely buying food which someone has modified or adjusted using chemicals. Whatever the preservative, it can be used alone or there can be a combination of preservative use and any other method(s) of food preservation. The method which is most likely to date back the furthest would be that of Salting. Salting has been known since ancient times and is a process where moisture is removed as much as possible and an environment is created which is considered unreceptive to bacteria. Meat for example, was salted for preservation; however the salting method was soon replaced by refrigeration in the mid-20th century. Pickling is another technique employed; it consists
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