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FOOD ADDITIVES & E NUMBERS-FACTS

Article · January 2007

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 FOOD ADDITIVES & E NUMBERS - FACTS
By

Dr Yunes Teinaz

Principal Environmental Health Officer

London Borough of Hackney

Food additives aren't a recent discovery, have been used by mankind for
centuries. Our ancestors used salt to preserve meats and fish, added herbs and
spices to improve the flavor of foods, preserved fruit with sugar, and pickled
olives and cucumbers in a vinegar solution.

Today, with the advent of processed foods, there has been a massive explosion
in the chemical adulteration of foods with additives. Considerable controversy
has been associated with the potential threats and possible benefits of food
additives.

Why Use Additives?

Food made at home is always at its best when eaten straight away. Food
produced on the large scale that is needed to supply supermarkets and other
food shops has to be transported and stored before it is consumed. It has to stay
in highest condition over a much longer period of time than home-cooked food.

Food Additives are substances added intentionally to foodstuffs to perform

certain technological functions, for example to colour, to sweeten or to preserve,
they are so essential that additives are used even in certain organic foods.

In many countries, lots of food is lost because it 'goes off' due to microbial growth
before it can be eaten. Food poisoning also shows the dangers of contaminated
food and without the use of preservatives; it would quite likely be more common.

However food additive is defined as: any natural or artificial material, other than
the basic raw ingredients, used in the production of a food item to improve the
final product or any substance that may affect the characteristics of any food,
including those used in the production, processing, treatment, packaging,
transportation or storage of food.

In the European Union (EU) Food additives are often referred to as E-numbers
as in the European Union countries additives are numbered with a prefix E. The
E thus refers to an approved additive.

Additives are not used to cover problems (such as spoiling) in the food, but are
often used to prevent spoilage or other loss of quality.

All additives are tested for toxicity and safety. However, side effects can never
completely be excluded.

There are many categories of food additives, such as:

x Food Colours
x Preservatives
x Antioxidants
x Sweeteners
x Emulsifiers, Stabilisers, Thickeners and Gelling Agents
x Flavour enhancers and flavourings

Food Colours

The primary reasons for adding colours to foods include:

x To offset colour loss due to exposure to light, air, extremes of

temperature, moisture and storage conditions
x To compensate for natural or seasonal variations in food raw materials
or the effects of processing and storage to meet consumer
expectations (Masking or disguising inferior quality, however, are
unacceptable uses of colours).
x To enhance colours that occur naturally but at levels weaker than
those usually associated with a given food.

Colours commonly found include caramel (E150a), which is used in products

such as gravy and soft drinks; and curcumin (E100), a yellow colour extracted
from turmeric roots.

Some people think that adding colour makes food look more attractive, while
other people think added colours are unnecessary and misleading.
Preservatives

These help stop food 'go off' and mean that food can be kept safe for longer.

Most food that has a long shelf-life is likely to include preservatives, unless
another method of preserving has been used ' such as freezing, canning or
drying.

For example, to stop mould or bacteria growing, dried fruit is often treated
with sulphur dioxide (E220); and bacon, ham, corned beef and other 'cured'
meats are often treated with nitrite and nitrate (E249 to E252) during the
curing process.

More traditional preservatives such as sugar, salt and vinegar are also still
used to preserve some foods

Antioxidants
Any food made using fats or oils - from meat pies to mayonnaise - is likely to contain
antioxidants.

These make foods last longer by helping to stop the fats, oils and certain vitamins
from combining with oxygen in the air - this is what makes food taste 'off' - become
rancid and lose colour.

Vitamin C, also called ascorbic acid or E300, is one of the most widely used
antioxidants.

Sweeteners

The desire for the pleasure of sweetness has a strong influence on what
people choose to eat and drink. Since early times, people have sought out
foods with sweet taste; for example, drawings on the walls of Egyptian tombs
show bee-keepers collecting honey, and sugar cane was grown in India some
2000 years ago.

Today, sucrose, or table sugar, is the taste standard by which all other
sweeteners are measured. An "ideal" sweetener tastes like sucrose, is
colourless, odourless, readily soluble, stable and economical. Some
sweeteners, like sugar, contain calories. And some are low-calorie or calorie-
free
Sweeteners are lower in calories and safer for teeth; sweeteners are often
used instead of sugar in products such as fizzy drinks, yoghurt and chewing
gum.

'Intense sweeteners', such as aspartame (E951), saccharin (E954) and

acesulfame-K (E950) are many times sweeter than sugar and so only very
small amounts are used.

Bulk sweeteners, such as sorbitol (E420), have about the same sweetness as
sugar and so they are used in similar amounts to sugar.

If you give concentrated soft drinks that contain sweeteners to children aged
under 4, it's important to dilute them more than you would for an adult. This is
to avoid children having large amounts of sweetener

Emulsifiers, Stabilisers, Thickeners and Gelling Agents

Add oil to water and the two liquids will never mix. At least not until an
emulsifier is added. Emulsifiers are molecules with one water-loving
(hydrophilic) and one oil-loving (hydrophobic) end. They make it possible for
water and oil to become finely dispersed in each other, creating a stable,
homogenous, smooth emulsion.

Emulsifiers such as Lecithins (E322), help mix ingredients together that would
normally separate, such as oil and water.

Stabilisers, such as locust bean gum (E410) made from carob beans, help
stop these ingredients from separating again.

Emulsifiers and stabilisers also give foods a consistent texture. They are used
in foods such as low-fat spreads and other sweet and savoury foods.

The most common gelling agent is pectin (E440), which is used to make jam.
Gelling agents are used to change the consistency of food. Thickeners help
give body to food in the same way as adding flour thickens a sauce

Flavour enhancers and flavourings

Flavour enhancers are used to bring out the flavour in a wide range of
savoury and sweet foods without adding a flavour of their own.

For example monosodium glutamate (E621), known as MSG, is added to

processed foods, especially soups, sauces and sausages.

Flavour enhancers are also used in a wide range of other foods including
savoury snacks, ready meals and condiments.
 Flavourings, in contrast, are added to a wide range of foods, usually in very
small amounts, to give a particular taste or smell.

Flavourings don't have E numbers because they are controlled by different

laws to other food additives.

Ingredients lists will say if flavourings have been used, but individual
flavourings might not be named

Salt, although not classed as a food additive, is the most widely used flavour
enhancer.

Why are additives given E numbers?

E numbers are codes for food additives and are usually found on food labels
throughout the European Union. The numbering scheme follows that of the
International Numbering System (INS) as determined by the Codex Alimentarius
committee. Only a subset of the INS additives are approved for use in the
European Union, giving rise to the 'E' prefix.

EU legislation requires most additives used in foods to be labelled clearly in the

list of ingredients, either by name or by an E number.

This provides you with information about the use of additives in foods and allows
you to avoid foods containing specific additives if you wish.

Giving an additive an E number means that it has passed safety tests and has
been approved for use in the European Union.

E numbers are universally adopted by the food industry worldwide, also

encountered on food labeling in other jurisdictions, including Australia, and New
Zealand. They are increasingly (though still rarely) found on North American
packaging, especially in Canada.

It is known that many E numbers contain unlisted ingredients in them generally

additives derived from animals and insects not sweetable for vegetarians,vegans
or other group each religious Muslim ,Jew,and Hindu.
 The E numbers are categorized as follows:

x E100–E199 (colours)
x E200–E299 (preservatives)
x E300–E399 (antioxidants, acidity regulators)
x E400–E499 (thickeners, stabilizers, emulsifiers)
x E500–E599 (acidity regulators, anti-caking agents)
x E600–E699 (flavour enhancers)
x E900–E999 (surface coating agents, gases, sweeteners )
x E1000–E1999 (additional chemicals)

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