What are the uses of food additives?

What are Food Additives? According to the Food Hygiene Law of China (1995) , food additives are synthetic or natural substances added to food for the purpose of improving the color, aroma and taste of food, as well as for the need of antiseptic and processing technology.

At present, there are 23 categories of food additives in China, with more than 2000 varieties. It should be noted that these food additives and illegal additives are different. Food additives are necessary for modern life, and products such as Sudan dyes, melamine, clenbuterol, and chlorpromazine, which cause public panic, are illegal.

Generally speaking, the effects of food additives can be summarized as follows:

1. Prevent spoilage. For example: preservatives can prevent food spoilage caused by microorganisms, extend the shelf life of food, but also has to prevent microbial contamination caused by food poisoning. Another example: Antioxidants can prevent or delay the oxidation of food, to provide food stability and storability, but also can prevent the formation of potentially harmful lipid oxidation.

2.  Improve Your senses. The proper use of food additives such as colorant, colorant, bleach, food flavor, emulsifier and thickener can obviously improve the sensory quality of food and meet people’s different needs.

3. Get healthy. The nutritional value of food can be greatly improved by adding some food fortification agents which belong to natural nutrition range in food processing, this is of great significance to prevent malnutrition and nutritional deficiency, promote nutrition balance and improve people’s health level.

4.  Make it easy to process. The use of defoamer, Filter Aid, stabilizer and coagulant in food processing can be beneficial to the processing of food. For example, the use of Gluconolactone as a coagulant for tofu may facilitate the mechanization and automation of Tofu production.

5. Other special needs. Food should cater to the different needs of people as much as possible. For example, if a person with diabetes can not eat sugar, a sugar-free food supply can be made with a non-nutritive sweetener or a low-calorie sweetener such as Sucralose or Aspartame. There are also enterprises to develop their own standard additives, leading enterprises in the industry is not allowed to develop the addition of preservatives, sodium cyclamate, pigments, spices.