Food Additives: Types and Concerns

Processed and mass-produced foods frequently incorporate food additives, which are substances added primarily for technical purposes. These additives serve various functions, such as improving safety, extending shelf life, or altering the sensory characteristics of food. Throughout history, substances like salt, spices, and sulfites have been employed to safeguard and enhance the flavor of foods.

It's noteworthy that many additives utilized by the food industry occur naturally in everyday foods. For example, MSG is found in higher quantities naturally in parmesan cheese, sardines, and tomatoes than when added as a food supplement.

Food additives can be broadly divided into three groups based on their functions: flavoring agents, enzyme preparations, and other additives that fulfill roles such as preservation, coloring, and sweetening.

Some of the most common food additives include monosodium glutamate (MSG), artificial food coloring, sodium nitrite, guar gum, and high-fructose corn syrup. These additives play a pivotal role in the development of modern products like low-calorie options, snacks, and ready-to-eat convenience foods.

Nevertheless, specific individuals may encounter issues with particular additives. Examples include flavor enhancers like monosodium glutamate (MSG) 621, food colorings such as tartrazine 102, yellow 2G107, sunset yellow FCF110, and cochineal 120. Additionally, preservatives like benzoates (210, 211, 212, 213), nitrates (249, 250, 251, 252), and sulphites (220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 228), as well as the artificial sweetener aspartame (951), may cause problems for certain individuals.

In conclusion, while food additives play a crucial role in the production and preservation of a diverse range of food products, it's essential to be mindful of potential sensitivities or reactions that some individuals may experience with specific additives.
Food Additives: Types and Concerns

Vegetable Gums in Processed Foods

Gums are now widespread in various processed foods, playing a crucial role in boosting thickness, facilitating emulsification, and ensuring product stability.

Serving as both thickeners and binding agents, vegetable gums consist of the starchy liquid formed during the cooking of diverse vegetables. When added to food products, these thickeners and vegetable gums improve viscosity without compromising flavor, taste, color, or texture.

Derived from a diverse range of sources, vegetable gums can be obtained from both terrestrial and marine environments. Specific seaweeds, such as carrageenan and alginates, serve as excellent sources of food gums from marine settings. On land, guar, locust bean gum, and pectin are extracted from plants, while xanthan gum is produced through microbial fermentation. In contrast, gelatin is sourced from animal tissue.

Gums' functions extend to maintaining moisture in foods and preventing staleness in baked goods like cookies, cakes, and bread. In salad dressings, gums act as both thickening agents and emulsifiers to counteract oil separation.

Agar agar is employed as a vegetable gum to gel dairy products like yogurt, showcasing its ability to absorb water at a rate 100 times its weight as a food thickener.

Cellulose gum, originating from plant cell walls like wood pulp and cottonseeds, has a longstanding role as a vegetable gum and food thickening agent. Commonly found in low-fat and diet products, it enhances consistency to make them more appealing to consumers.
Vegetable Gums in Processed Foods

Food Bulking Agents Overview

Food bulking agents, often comprised of non-nutritive substances like non-starch polysaccharides, are added to foods to increase volume or weight without changing the taste, while also preserving functionality and utility. This enhances the feeling of satiety, particularly in foods designed for weight reduction.

Additives are substances introduced in small amounts to enhance or preserve a product. Bulking agents provide the mouthfeel qualities of sugar and fat without the accompanying sweetness, and they can be derived from carbohydrates, proteins, or fats. Examples of hydrocolloids, such as pectin, gelatin, xanthan, gellan, algin, guar, konjac, locust bean, and inulin, can serve as substitutes for fat.

Widely employed in the food industry, bulking agents enhance the bulk and texture of various food items. They are frequently used to replace fat or sugar in low-calorie or low-sugar products and improve the texture and shelf life of processed foods.

Bulking agents have applications in diverse food categories, including bakery products, sauces, seasonings, condiments, soups, confectionery, fats, oils, sweet spreads, mayonnaise, salad dressings, convenience foods, and processed meats. Additionally, they play a role in pet foods and dairy products such as desserts and ice cream.
Food Bulking Agents Overview

Food additive – antifoaming agent

A foam is a substance that is formed by trapping pockets of gas in a liquid or solid. A bath sponge and the head on a glass of beer are examples of foams. In most foams, the volume of gas is large, with thin films of liquid or solid separating the regions of gas. Foaming agent also known as aerating agent. A foaming agent is additives that facilitates formation of foam and make it possible to form or maintain a uniform dispersion of a gaseous phase in liquid or solid food.

These compounds have been suggested for use in the preparation of certain toppings, cakes and cake mixes, coffee whiteners, whipped creams, beverages and soft drinks.

A defoamer or an anti-foaming agent is a chemical additive that reduces and hinders the formation of foam caused by protein or gases in industrial process liquids. The terms anti-foam agent and defoamer are often used interchangeably.

These are less viscous, easily spreadable on the foamy surface, and possess affinity to the air–liquid surface where it destabilizes the foam lamellas, which rupture the air bubbles and break down the surface foam. Foaming may be largely suppressed or completely eliminated by the use of small quantities, generally 10 ppm.

Example of antifoaming agents:
*Polyoxyethylene stearate: permitted only in wine that has been imported from certain countries, where it is used to inhibit foam formation during fermentation. Polyoxyethylene stearate is also an emulsifier and antifoaming agent used in processed foods, fruit jellies, and sauces.
*Polysorbate 65: act as a carriers and solvents for colors, fat-soluble antioxidants and antifoaming agents. Used to reduce foam formation during food processing. Typical Products include ice cream and frozen desserts, sugar confectionery, cakes and cake mixes, coffee whiteners and whipped creams based on dairy and vegetable fat.
Food additive – antifoaming agent

Starches: Major polysaccharide in plants

Chemically is composed of two glucan polymers, amylose, and amylopectin. These polymers are deposited in granules of different sizes, large A-, medium B- and small C-type, and shapes, as disk-like and spherical.

It provides humans with energy (4 cal per gram) and is hydrolyzed to glucose, supplying the glucose that is necessary for brain and central nervous system functioning.

Nutritionists agree that carbohydrates should be an important part of human diet. The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) recommends that the intake of total carbohydrates, including carbohydrates from starchy foods (generally in the form of tubers or root vegetables) should range from 45-60% of the total energy intake for both adults and children.

Amylose influences the packing of amylopectin into crystallites and the organization of the crystalline lamella within starch granules. This is important for properties related to water uptake as swelling and gelatinization.

Starch is used in the food industry either as food products or additives for thickening, preservation and quality enhancer in baked foods, confectioneries, pastas, soups and sauces, and mayonnaises.

Starch can be used as a food additive to control the uniformity, stability and texture of soups and sauces, to resist the gel breakdown during processing and to raise the shelf life of products.

Starch sources are numerous, with common ones derived from cereal grains such as wheat, corn, or rice. Wheat yields a cloudy, thick mixture, while cornstarch produces more clear mixtures such as gravies or sauces. Vegetables, roots and tubers, including the root of cassava, and potatoes.
Starches: Major polysaccharide in plants

Anti-caking agent in food products

Caking, whereby free-flowing particles aggregates to form lumps, of food powders is a common problem which can contribute to reduced product quality, functionality and shortened shelf­‐life. It can occur during processing, handling or storage and could therefore be a problem both in the production lines and for the consumers.

Function food additives can be classified by their functional purpose. Most falling to just two categories:
*those that assist in manufacture or use
*those that produce end-product characteristics
Free-flow or anti- caking agents fall into the first category.

Anti-caking agents, prevents the formation of lumps making these products manageable for packaging, transport, and for use by end consumer. Anti-caking agent is the food additive that prevents agglomeration in certain solids, permitting a free-flowing condition. It reduces the tendency of particles of food to adhere to one another.

Anti-caking agents are added in very small amounts to powders and other food products like table salt, spices, milk powder, flour, sugar and many more pantry friendly items. They allow a wide range of products to freely flow when they’re being used. They often appear in products that are more susceptible to clumping such sugar or flour.

Types of anti-caking agent
*Anti-caking agent
*Anti-stick agent
*Drying agent
*Dusting agent 

Anti-caking agent in food products 

Stabilizers in food and beverages

One of the functions of food additives is to maintain product consistency and also improve mouth-feel. Such as emulsifiers give products a consistent texture and prevent them from separating, while stabilizers and thickeners give smooth uniform texture to deliver on consumer expectation.

Stabilizers are indispensable substances in food items and categorized as food additives. The purpose of emulsifiers & stabilizers is to facilitate the mixing together of ingredients that normally would not mix namely fat and water. Stabilizers are used customarily to improve thickening, mouthfeel, product structure stability water-binding capacity, creamy consistency, and viscosity.

The stabilizers used to enhance the shelf life of food product by preventing them from the microbial attack are called food grade stabilizers.

Stabilizer are substances that can stabilize, retain or intensify an existing colour of a foodstuff and substances that increase the binding capacity of the food to allow the binding of food pieces into reconstituted food.

Xanthan gum is often used in drinks made with citrus and in fruit-flavored drinks to create a satisfactory texture and as a stabilizer for odor and flavor. Because it dissolves quickly and completely at low pH, xanthan gum helps with the suspension of insoluble components.
Stabilizers in food and beverages

The effect of food additives on sensory value of food

Food additives preserve the freshness and appeal of food between the times it is manufactured and when it finally reaches the market. Additives may also improve nutritional value of foods and improve their taste, texture, consistency or color.

Color, odor, taste and consistency or texture, which are important for the sensory value of food, may decreases during processing and storage. Such decreases can be corrected or readjusted by additives such as pigment aroma compounds or flavor enhancers.

When the food is to be stored for a prolonged period, use of additives and preservatives is essential in order to maintain its quality and flavor. Development of “off flavor” for instance, derived from fat or oil oxidation, can be suppressed by antioxidants. Food texture can be stabilized by adding minerals or polysaccharides, and by many other means.

A flavour additive is a single chemical or blend of chemicals of natural or synthetic origin that provides all or part of the flavour impact of a particular food. These chemicals are added in order to replace flavour lost in processing and to develop new products. Flavourings are the largest group of food additives, with more than 1,200 compounds available for commercial use.

Some artificial colors are also added to the foods to give them an appealing look. These coloring substances are erythrosine (red), cantaxanthin (orange), amaranth (Azoic red), tartrazine (Azoic yellow) and annatto bixine (yellow orange). Colorants are often necessary to produce a uniform product from raw materials that vary in colour intensity. Colorants used as food additives are classified as natural or synthetic.

Additives and preservatives maintain the quality and consistency of the foods. They also maintain palatability and wholesomeness of the food, improve or maintain its nutritional value, control appropriate pH, provide leavening and color, and enhance its flavor.
The effect of food additives on sensory value of food

Nutritional value of food can be improved and maintained by additives

The use of additives can enhance the nutritive value of food. Food additives are utilized for the purpose of restoring nutrients lost or degraded during production, fortifying or enriching certain foods in order to correct dietary deficiencies, or adding nutrients to food substitutes.

Additive such as vitamins, minerals, amino acids and amino acids derivatives are utilized to increase the nutritive value of food. Vitamins and minerals are added to many common foods such as milk, flour, cereal and margarine to make up for those likely to be lacking in a person’s diet or lost in processing. When foods are processed, there may be loss of some nutrients and additives may be added to restore the original value.

A particular diet may also require the use of thickening agents, emulsifiers, sweeteners, etc. The fortification of foods began in 1924 when iodine was added to table salt for the prevention of goitre. Vitamins are commonly added to many foods in order to enrich their nutritional value. They help to increase the shelf life of the food by maintaining product consistency, wholesomeness and freshness.
Nutritional value of food can be improved and maintained by additives

Basic concept of food additives

Food additives are not a new invention. Since early times, there has been a need to preserve food from one harvest to another and to improve the presentation and nutritional value of food. Additives such as salt, spices, and sulfites have been used since ancient times to preserve foods and make them more palatable.

Why adding food additives?
*Food production separated from areas of population concentration –preservatives
*Added for functional properties –color, flavor, texture, nutritional supplements etc
*Convenience foods –foods whose preparation labor removed from household to processor or manufacturer. eg flour, can of beans or soups, cake mix, githeri, chapos, pizzas, etc

Technological advances in food processing have increased the variety and use of these additives. Today, more than 2500different additives are intentionally added to foods to produce a desired effect.

When the food is to be stored for a prolonged period, use of additives and preservatives is essential in order to maintain its quality and flavor. The excess water in the foods can cause the growth of bacteria, fungi and yeasts. Use of additives and preservatives prevents spoiling of the foods due to the growth of bacteria and fungi.

Many modern products, such as low-calorie, snack, and ready-to-eat convenience foods, would not be possible without food additives. Food additives and their metabolites are subjected to rigorous toxicological analysis prior to their approval for use in the industry.

Some of the commonly used food additives and preservatives are aluminum silicate, amino acid compounds, ammonium carbonates, sodium nitrate, propyl gallate, butylated hydrozyttoluene (BHT), butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), monosodium glutamate, white sugar, potassium bromate, potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate, etc.
Basic concept of food additives

The use of food additives

The use of food additives is becoming more important in the production and worldwide distribution of food.

The definition of food additive includes both substances remaining in the finished food products, such as food colors and preservatives and substances that do not remain in the finished products, including infiltration-supporting agents.

The earliest food additives, use as long ago as 5000 years, included vinegar to pickle vegetables; salting and smoking to help preserve meat and fish; herbs to improve flavor; and vegetable coloring to improve appearance of food.

Today, food additives are added to food for these and a very wide variety of other purposes including uses to regulate acidity, prevent food from adhering to surfaces, enhance texture, improve food’s baking quality or color and so on.

Other uses of food additive including:
*Anti-caking agents, as additive that reduce the tendency of food components to adhere to one another.
*Anti-foaming agents, as additives that prevent or reduce foaming.
*Antioxidants, as additives that prolong the shelf life of foods by protecting against deterioration cause by oxidation.
The use of food additives 

Food additive enhance cake’s texture

Sulfur dioxide as food additive

Sulfur dioxide has been used since olden times in the form of 1-2% aqueous solutions as a disinfectant for equipment, barrels, bottles, corks and other ancillary items for the wine, drinks and food industries.

Fumes of burning sulfur were used as a sanitizing agent in wine-making by the ancient Egyptians and Romans. The practice is continued by the modern wine industry.

The compound is a colorless, nonflammable gas or liquid under pressure, with a suffocating, pungent odor.

Sulfur dioxide is used to prevent browning in certain dried fruits and to prevent wild yeast growth in wines used to make vinegar.

Sulfur dioxide also is used to control the growth of undesirable microorganism in soft fruits, fruit juices, wines, sausages, fresh shrimp, and acid pickles and using extraction of starches.

It is added to expressed grape juices used for making wines to inhibit molds, bacteria, and undesirable yeasts.

The most obvious drawback of sulfur dioxide is its intense pungent odor, which may be apparent in foods it is used to treat.
Sulfur dioxide as food additive

Carotenoid pigments as food colorants

Many colorants are natural and these include the yellow, from the annatto seed; green form chlorophyll; orange from carotene; brown form burnt sugar; and red from beets tomatoes and the cochineal insect. 

The carotenoids, particularly their nature-identical synthetic counter parts, beta-app-8’-carotenal,beta-carotene and canthaxanthin, are popular food colorants.

Carotenoids are classified as oil soluble but most foods require water soluble colorants; thus their approaches were used to provide water dispersible preparations. Carotenoids colorants are appropriate for a wide variety of foods.

The carotenoids add yellow, red and orange pigmentation to foods. Beta-carotene and beta-apo-8’-carotenal have vitamin activity but canthaxanthin does not.

Federal regulations permit addition of beta-carotene to foods at any concentration but specify maximum limits fro beta-app-8’ carotenal (1.5 mg/lb or pinto food).

Beta-carotene is used to colour margarine, shortening, butter, cheese, baked goods, confections, ice cream, egg nog, macaroni products, soups, juices, pudding and beverages. Beta-carotene has good tinctorial strength fair light stability, poor oxidation stability and good pH stability.

Beta-apo-8’-carotenal may be used to colour juices, fruit drink, soups, jams, jellies, gelatine, processed cheese, margarine, sale dressing and fats and oils.
Carotenoid pigments as food colorants

Gelling agent: Gellan gum

Gellan gums are gelling polymers. It has only relatively recently been introduced as a gelling agent. Gellation requires divalent cations in the media and in general gellan gums provide a more transparent matrix.

Gellan gum first received approval for food use in Japan in 1988. It is a microbial polysaccharide derived from the organism Pseudomonas elodea, is a linear polymer with a tetrasaccharide repeat unit consisting of glucose, glucuronic acid, glucose and rhamnose.

It is now approved for food, nonfood, cosmetic and pharmaceutical use in the USA, Canada, Australia and many other countries in Latin America South America, Asia and the European Union.

Gellan gum is used commercially in a wide range of food applications:
*Water based gels
*Fabricated foods
*Bakery applications
*Pie fillings and puddings
*Dairy foods
*Beverages
*Confections
*Fruit applications

Gellan gums can be used in milk based products and it is possible to hydrate gellan gum directly in milk by heating to above 75 °C.

In dairy products at acid pH (such as yogurt, sour cream, or direct acidified milk gels) it is necessary to include another hydrocolloids (such as CMC or guar gum) to act as a protective colloid and prevent precipitation of the milk protein.

In pharmaceuticals application, gellan gum has been used as a novel drug-delivery vehicle, in film formation for transdermal for drug delivery and as a component in controlled –released system.
Gelling agent: Gellan gum

Sodium lauryl sulfate as food additive

Functional use of sodium lauryl sulfate in foods including surface tension control agent, thickener, wetting agent, whipping agent, hog/poultry scald agent, and emulsifier.

Sodium lauryl sulfate found in many personal acre products such as soaps, shampoo, toothpaste, etc. It is inexpensive and very effective foamer. These aids are capable of giving the product whipping properties that are comparable to or even better than, then natural untreated product.

Chemicals structure of sodium lauryl sulfate

Sodium lauryl sulfate is a mixture of sodium alkyl sulfates, primarily sodium lauryl sulfate, containing not more than a total of 8% of sedum sulfate and sodium chloride. Formaldehyde may be included as a preservative in concentration of up to 0.1%.

It occurs as small, white or light yellow crystals having a slight, characteristics odor.
Sodium lauryl sulfate as food additive

Flavor enhancers

Flavor enhancers are chemical compounds or materials that are used in very minute quantities to intensify or enhance the favor that is already present in the food.

Monosodium glutamate is one of the best known and most widely used flavor enhancers. It is highly used food additive all over the world. Other less prominent flavor enhancers, which are similar to MSG, include tricholoric acid and ibotenic acid.

They are many theories how the flavor enhancers work.  One theory is that they increase the sensitivity of the taste buds thus increasing flavor.

A second theory suggested that an increase in salivation as a result of the flavor enhancers will increase flavor perception. While a third theory of intensified flavor perception is based on the observation that flavor enhancers produce certain physical sensations in the mouth such as coolness and heat.

Flavor enhancers, very well known in oriental cuisines, have the ability of making more intense basic flavors of meat, meat products, and other foods of animal origin.

Flavor enhancers now intensify desired flavors and mask unwanted ones in beverage, processed fruit and vegetables, and baked goods like bread and cakes.
Flavor enhancers

Man-made food additives

Food additives under Prevention of Food Adulteration (PFA) include colors, flavoring, agents, antioxidants, anticaking agents, emulsifying and stabilizing agents.

Food additives can delay staleness, prevent caking, make dried mixes easier to dissolve, stop rancidity developing in fatty foods, stop tinned fruits and vegetables from losing color and firmness.

Food preservatives are the additives that used to inhibit the growth of bacteria, molds and yeast in the food. Some preservatives are used to inhibit color and texture changes when food is exposed to air.

Some of the additives are manufactured from the natural sources such as corn, beet and soybean, while some are artificial, man-made additives.

More than 90% of food additives are synthetic. Man-made sweeteners are very common food additives used in processed foods and low calorie beverages.

Aspartame is the most common synthetic sweetener. It is used in diet foods, chewing gum, breakfast cereal and yoghurt.

Man-made food additives are extensively tested for toxicity before they are allowed for use in food.

Thus they are the safest components of the diet. In practice the only adverse reactions to food additives are intolerances.
Man-made food additives

Major group of food additives

Food additive is a substance or mixture of substances, other than basic food stuff, which is present in food as a result of any activity of production, processing, storage or packaging.

Food additive can be divided into two major groups: intentional additives and incidental additives.

Intentional additives are chemical substances that are added to food for specific purpose, including improving, maintaining, or stabilizing some characteristics of food.

Therefore intentional food additives include preservatives, antioxidants, sequestrants, surface active agents, stabilizers and thickeners, bleaching and maturing agents and starch modifiers, buffers, acids and alkalis.

Incidental additives are environmental chemicals of known origin and anticipated use: for example, pesticides, antibiotics and growth stimulants.

Incidental additives may be transferred to foods by contact such as ingredients of packaging or of equipment surface coating. They are really contaminants from some phase of production, processing, storage, packaging or consumer preparations.

Currently, more than 2800 different substances are intentionally added to foods.  As many as 10,000 other substances enter foods as contaminants.

Although there are controls over intentional or incidental additives, intentional additives are regulated by strict government controls.
Major group of food additives 

Alginate as food additive

Alginates are safe and approved as food additives by the European Community and by the USFDA and listed in the UN Codex Alimentarius.

Alginates are given E numbers. Alginic acid is E400, while the sodium, potassium, ammonium and calcium salts are E401-E404 respectively. The most widely used is the sodium salt.

Alginates are the principal structural components of brown seaweeds. They are present in seaweed as a mixed salt of sodium, potassium, calcium and magnesium.

It acts as bulking agent, emulsifier, fiber, stabilizer and thickener. Alginate are routinely used in foods to improve, change and stabilize texture by exploiting properties such as gelatin, viscosity enhancement and stabilization of aqueous solution mixtures, dispersion and emulsions.

Theoretically, due to its ability to trap dietary cholesterol in its gel like structure, it may have cholesterol-lowering effects.

Alginates are very efficient water binders and this leads to their use as thickeners where low levels give high viscosities; as gelling agents; and in solid foods to prevent water loss, syneresis and phase separation.

This additive are extensively used in the preparation of ice creams, in the production of dairy products, such as whipped cream products, milk powder, milk-mixing products, milk shakes, candies, processed cheese, soft cheese and cheese creams.
Alginate as food additive

Food additives: functions and the principles

At the turn of the century, changes in population from agriculture to industrial had resulted in a need to establish distribution systems to supply the growing population of the cities with food.

Therefore, food additives are used to preserve the quality of the food and maintain its appeal and at times to restore diminished nutritional value.

It is added to food during its production, processing, treatment, storage or packaging. Some additives are used to change a food’s color or maintain its natural color. Other additives prevent food from spoiling or increase a product’s nutritional value.

According to expert, food deterioration results when the food supply is more than the consumption.

Deterioration can also accrue during the long time required in transit or during storage before it actually reached the consumers.

The current forms of food production and distribution have increased the demand for longer shelf life. Furthermore, the world food supply situation requires preservations by avoiding deterioration as much as possible.

The quality of food can be affected by physical, chemical, biochemical and microbiological processes.

The addition of permitted chemicals substances or food additives can prevent or greatly impede the process of deterioration.

A few principles governing the use of a food additive:
*Technological effective
*Safe in use. Food additives and their degradation products should be non-toxic at their recommend levels of use.
*Absolutely necessary quantity
*Never with the intention of misleading the consumer about the nature or quality of a food
*Minimum use of non-nutrient food additive. They are added to the food in carefully controlled amounts during processing.
*The additives are applied only when required for the nutritive or sensory value of food.
Food additives: functions and the principles