Who are food additives?

Food additives are added to food products in very low dose.

These composite products in most cases of simple molecules used to fulfill many objectives:
- Emulsifier;
- Color;
- Conservative;
- Flavor

The use and labeling of all food additives are regulated by an EU directive from 1989 (89/107/EEC). This directive makes clear what a food additive, “any substance not normally consumed as a food in itself and not used as a characteristic ingredient of food, it has nutritional value or not, whose ‘deliberate addition to food for a technological purpose in the manufacture, processing, preparation, packaging, transport or storage of, or may reasonably expect to be him or a derivative thereof, directly or indirectly a component of that food. ”

In the vast majority of cases, food additives are naturally occurring.
A specific coding

For more transparency to the consumer, each food additive is classified in one of 23 categories that comprise the Codex Alimentarius whose common encodings are:

- E1xx: colors;
- E2xx: the Conservatives (the vast majority of food additives);
- E3xx: antioxidants;
- E4xx: agents including textures are found but also emulsifiers thickeners (modified starch mainly), gelling agents and stabilizers;
- E5xx and superiors flavor enhancers, sweeteners and acidifying.

In these conventional additives used to preserve food longer and keep them appetizing added more recently of nutritional additives such as Omega 3.