The food industry has evolved immensely in the last few decades, requiring food brands to scale their businesses and boost growth. As a result, they are releasing the importance of using food additives to improve food quality while increasing shelf life. So, the reason you can use canned or frozen foods for up to several days or weeks is the addition of preservatives in them.
What are Food Additives?
The WHO defines food additives as substances usually added to processed foods or other kinds of edible items produced on a large industrial scale. These substances are primarily added to foods for multiple benefits, including increasing their shelf life, enhancing their safety, etc.
Food additives are also added to enhance the sensory properties or the appeal of the food to boost sales. For example, flavoring agents or other aromatic chemicals can help improve the smell, taste, appearance, and texture of edibles to make them more attractive. Don’t worry, if you are buying from a reputed brand, they surely have passed all the necessary food standards and safety tests.
Types of Food Additives
Food additives can be of varying types, including preservatives, food colorings, sweeteners, emulsifiers, antioxidants, thickeners, enzymes, acidity regulators, and many more. Let’s discuss the types in detail.
Type A: Additives Used to Improved Food Quality
Under this category, we have -
- Coloring Agents: These substances help restore the natural food color or make the edibles more appealing or mouth-watering.
- Texturing Agents: Texturing agents include thickeners, emulsifiers, and other stabilizers. While emulsifiers help stabilize the mixture of two or more heterogeneous, non-miscible liquids, thickeners can improve the food’s viscosity.
- Flavoring Agents: These agents help improve the characteristics of the food, such as imparting a desired flavor. For instance, Vanillin is used to enhance the flavors of confectionary products and ice-creams.
- Anticaking Agents: These additives help to avoid lump formation in any dish or food item. The most common applications of anticaking agents include protein powders, milk powders, health drinks, spice blends, etc.
- Bleaching Agents: Bleaching or maturing additives act as oxidizing agents to enhance food quality. For example, food industries often add them to milled flours to prevent discoloration after baking.
- Acidity Regulators: Acidity regulators help stabilize the pH levels of the food products and help maintain the desired acidity or alkalinity of the edibles.
Type B: Preservatives -To Boost Shelf Life
Preservatives can also be subdivided into the following categories -
- Antioxidants: As the name suggests, antioxidants are excellent for preventing rancidity, which is often responsible for hampering the odor and flavor of edibles. For example, food companies often add antioxidants in fatty foods and commercial fats, like essential oils, butter, cake mixes, etc., to prevent the spoilage of oils and fats.
- Antimicrobial Agents: Antimicrobial agents like Sorbic acid help to prevent fungi and yeast formation that may degrade the quality of baked products, as well as juices or fruit pulp.
How to Use Food Additives? What are the Safety Guidelines to Keep in Mind?
Before adding food additives, it’s mandatory to learn about the latest food safety guidelines recommended by authoritative bodies, like food associations at the international, national, or regional levels, and the WHO. Authoritative bodies like the FDA, FAO, JECFA, etc., are responsible for assessing the risks that food additives may have on human health.
For instance, the JECFA bases its evaluations on scientific analyses of all available toxicological, biochemical, and other data on the concerned additive. The group performs the necessary animal tests, observes reactions in humans, and performs in-depth research studies to decide whether a substance is safe for consumption.
Furthermore, the JECFA requires food industries that use feed additives to conduct acute and short- and long-term toxicological assessments to study how the substance is absorbed, dissolved, distributed, and excreted within the human body. These evaluations also include the analysis of any side effects or hazardousness of the by-products of the additive at specific exposure levels.
Besides safety testing, you must consider other factors like acceptable daily intake (ADI) of any particular substance without causing potential harm. Moreover, you also need to consider the potential threats to sensitive populations. For example, some people are allergic or intolerant to certain feed additives. Even if you are required to add a substance that may cause allergic reactions in some populations, it’s mandatory to mention that. Also, young kids and pregnant women are vulnerable to certain chemicals, so study the potential hazards of any additive before using it.
Key Takeaways
In conclusion, we can use food additives depending on the result we wish to achieve - be it for increasing the shelf-life or enhancing the flavor and appearance of the food. Most importantly, being a responsible food manufacturer, you should list all the additives used in a food item on the product label to alert consumers of any allergens and intolerant ingredients.
Moreover, we recommend you try food additives only from reputed suppliers, such as Mond star. Mondstar additives are known to be the best-in-class, as the brand provides top-quality substances and chemical raw materials to clients across 90+ nations worldwide. Besides, Mondstar is committed to good health, safety, and eco-friendly methods of handling food substances.
No comments yet