Food additives are used as anti-microbial agents, to reduce physical and chemical spoilage and to aid processing.
Their use is as old as cookery. Salting and smoking as preservation techniques and the addition of spices and sweeteners to make food more palatable and introduce a greater variety into eating have been used since prehistoric times.
It was during the nineteenth century that the use of food additives proliferated enormously and many of them were highly reprehensible.
Red lead was used to color sweets, alum and copper sulphate to ‘improve’ bread, ground beech leaves to adulterate tea and bone meal to whiten flour.
Today, effective methods of detection and more or less strict food legislation prevent the more glaring transgression in many countries.
Nevertheless, just as the aim of the politician is to attain power, the purpose of business is to make money and for many the temptation to break the law is too great.
A hundred years ago, some manufacturers were prosecuted for cheapening spice with starch of groundnut shells.
Today, some are prosecuted for adding excessive amounts of soya protein to meat products.
The increase use of synthetic food additives also poses health problems but these must be seem in proper perspective.
Some toxins are present in very small amounts but others in such quality that, if they were an ingredient in a new food additive, it would almost certainly be prohibited.
Also, a large number of other toxins have been isolated from seafood and fungi.
Food additives actually are essential to modern living. Without them the world’s population could not be fed adequately and the range and palatability of food could not be maintained.
Food Additives in general
