Food Additives Essay

501 Words3 Pages
CHAPTER 1. The Problem and Its Background Introduction Food additives are substances adds to a food. Additives are functional ingredients: they are added into foods on purpose to improve safety, nutritional value and/or taste and appearance. Basically, food additives are used to: Preserve foods safely e.g. preventing bacteria from growing and causing food to rot or cause food poisoning. Maintain food nutrition e.g. preventing the loss or breakdown of vitamins and amino acids. Give food special qualities e.g. artificial sweeteners for making diabetic snacks or using bulking agents to make food less fattening. Make food more appealing (taste or appearance) e.g. thickeners and stabilisers to prevent the ingredients of ice cream and salad dressings from separating. Stills different pass off foods from spoiling. Common food additives include baking soda, added to dough to engage it rise, and iodine, put into salt to prevent goiter. Some food additives start from other foods. In addition, scientists can create food additives in the laboratory. Some people consider food additives dangerous to their health. Except many of these substances occur naturally in foods that people bring on eaten for centuries. The use of food additives is an emotional topic which continues to provoke consumer concern. Despite modern-day associations food additives have been used for centuries. Food preservation began when man first learned to safeguard food from one harvest to the next and by the salting and smoking of meat and fish. The Egyptians used colors and flavorings, and the Romans used saltpeter (potassium nitrate), spices and colors for preservation and to improve the appearance of foods. Cooks regularly used baking powder as a raising agent, thickeners for sauces and gravies, and colors, such as cochineal, to transform good-quality raw materials into foods that were safe,
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