Food Additives• “More Nutritious than ever”• “New improved flavor”• “Stays fresher longer”

• What are Food additives? Are they good?

or Bad?

What are Food Additives?• Any substance a food producer

intentionally adds to a food for a specific purpose

• Around 3,000 additives are used

Natural Additives• Occur naturally in food and plants– Salt, sugar, seaweed, acids

Artificial, or Synthetic Additives

• Made in a laboratory– Chemicals are joined or modified in the

lab

How Additives are Used• Improve storage properties, increase

healthfulness, make food more appealing and improve processing and preparation

• We often feel misled and deceived by additives

Food Storage• 200 years ago we had to eat fresh

foods• Can be natural or artificial• Keeps food preserved prevents mold,

bacteria, spoiling, browning…

Increase Healthfulness• Fortification: adding a nutrient not

normally found in a food

Increase Healthfulness• Restoration: reestablish the products

original nutritional value

Increase Healthfulness• Enrichment: Includes restoration of

nutrients as well as the addition of more nutrients– Thiamin, niacin, riboflavin, iron…

Increase Healthfulness• Nutrification: Adding nutrients to a

food with low nutrient value to replace a meal– Nutrified bars and shakes

Make Food Appealing• Color: added to drinks, cereal,

jams……–Most are Synthetic: identified with a

number– Very few are natural

Make Food Appealing• Flavor: 2,000 of the 3,000 additives

are for flavor– Demand for natural flavors far exceeds

supply–MSG

Make Food Appealing• Sweeteners: most common of all

flavor enhancers, improve aroma and taste– Nutritive and Nonnutritive

Make Food Appealing• Nutritive Sweeteners: metabolize to

produce calories– Table sugar, brown sugar, maple syrup,

molasses, honey…– Sorbitol: absorbs slowly, does not taste

as sweet

Make Food Appealing• Nonnutritive Sweeteners: Artificial,

no calories, taste sweet– Low-calorie and calorie free products

Make Food Appealing• Splenda uses sucralose: 600 time

sweeter then sugar, produces no calories, chemical change to sugar molecule, can cook with it

Make Food Appealing• Sweet’N Low uses Saccharin: 300

times sweeter, made from petroleum products, can cook with it

Make Food Appealing• Aspartame: 200 times sweeter, no

calories, cannot use in cooking, loses sweetness in beverages

• “Available evidence suggests that consumption of aspartame by normal humans is safe and is not associated with serious adverse health effects”

• Added to more than 6,000 food products

• Body breaks it down into aspartic acid, methanol and phenylalanine

Aspartame Facts

• Approved intake is 50mg/kg of body wt/day– 12 oz diet soda: 225mg– 8 oz yogurt: 80mg– 4 oz jello: 32mg

• 18kg/40lb child would have to consume 4 12oz cans of soda or nine 8oz glasses of fruit

Aspartame Facts

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqIFDoOwSFM

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrahc-KfBRo&feature=related

Aspartame Facts

Processing & Preparation• Improve texture, a stabilizer to keep

mixture balanced– Peanut butter and ice cream

• Amount in mg that a person can safely consume on average every day over a lifetime without risk

• Conservative level• Amount 100 times less than the

maximum level at which no observed effect occurs in animals

Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI)

Regulations of Additives• FDA monitors safety of additives– 1/100 of the amount of an additive

found to be safe in lab animals• GRAS list: Generally Recognized as

Safe 670 items that are not regulated as additives

What are the long term Effects???

• Long term effects are impossible to predict– Nitrates: used to cure meat now being

linked to colon cancer– Saccharin removed from GRAS list show

to cause cancer in lab animals

• Sulfites- preservative FDA reduced the amount allowed

• MSG- flavor• BHT- preservative

Allergies

• Increase fortified food decrease a diversified diet

• Increase fortified food, challenge to determine nutritional balance

Poor Eating Habits

• Oil-based waxes on fruit = shinier = increased sales– FDA approved as a preservative

• Unnatural standards for foods• Raises price• Begin to prefer artificial over real

Unneeded additives

• Preservatives extend the shelf life• Additives prevent diseases caused by

malnutrition– Goiters, Iodine added to table salts– Rickets, Vitamin D added to milk– Pellagra, iron added to flour and

cornmeal

Safety & Improved Nutrition