What do you know about food additives? Food additives are chemicals that keep food fresh or enhance its colour, flavour or texture. Some people are sensitive to food additives, but this is rare. Reactions to food additives include hives or diarrhoea, other digestive disorders and respiratory problems such as asthma. Food additives are chemicals added to foods to keep them fresh or to enhance their colour, flavour or texture. They may include food colourings (such as tartrazine or cochineal), flavour enhancers (such as MSG) or a range of preservatives. Most food additives are listed on the product label, along with other ingredients, in a descending order by weight (flavours are an exception and do not need to be identified). Sometimes, the additive is spelt out in full. At other times, it is represented by a code number: for example, cochineal may be listed as Colouring (120); sodium sulphite may be shown as Preservative (221). Animal tests for food additive safety Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) is responsible for the approval of which food additives are allowed in Australian foods. All food additives used in Australia undergo a safety assessment, which includes rigorous testing, before they are approved. Toxicological tests on animals are used to determine the amount of the additive that is expected to be safe when consumed by humans. This is usually an amount 100 times less than the maximum daily dose at which ‘no observable effects’ are produced by an additive consumed over the test animal’s lifetime. If there is any doubt over the safety of an additive, approval is not given. If new scientific information becomes available suggesting that a food additive is no longer safe, the approval to use the food additive would be withdrawn. Combined effects not known Most food additives are tested in isolation, rather than in combination with other additives. The long-term effects of consuming a combination of different additives are currently unknown.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Dec 2014 04:38:04 +0000
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