Know the Additives in Your Food

Sarah Abraham, theindianrepublic.com, Saturday, 22 March 2014: Buying food in a packet? Look at the numbers. 

Over the last two decades, we have gone from eating mostly locally sourced produce bought from local grocery shops to shopping at supermarkets every week. Our lifestyle has also changed enough that we eat more things that come from packets. In the last decade or so, we have come to recognise that we don’t always know what’s in those packets, so we started looking for the list of ingredients. So now when we buy a packet of biscuits, we know that it probably has flour of some kind, vegetable oils, some kind of sweetener, salt – and then you get a series of things that sound scientific but we don’t know what they are. These are the additives that you generally don’t find in home cooking.

While all of them seem to have scientific sounding names, some of them are regular ingredients that are used in all kinds of cooking. For instance, raising agent 500(ii) sounds awfully scientific, but it’s plain old sodium bicarbonate – baking soda, in moderate quantities considered very good for neutralising acidity in the stomach. Emulsifiers are compounds that let ingredients that normally don’t get along, such as oil and water, mix freely. They’re usually synthetic fats and according to current research, are only of real concern if you’re a vegan or a vegetarian, because it can be derived from animal fat. If you see E621 on a packet, on the other hand, you should know that it contains monosodium glutamate, or the dreaded MSG which has a very bad rep.

*Contains added colours and permitted preservatives – the fine print

The real problem though is in that line at the bottom of most lists of ingredients: contains added colours and permitted preservatives. Many of these added colours and preservatives have not been thoroughly investigated, so these are artificial compounds whose effects we don’t really know. For instance, colour 102 is something you will see on a few packages, especially soft drinks, energy drinks, colourful jams etc. E102, also called tartrazine, is one of the colours being phased out in the European Union. It can cause digestive irritability. Studies indicate that in conjunction with sodium benzoate (E211), a common preservative, it can cause signs of behavioural disorders, especially among young children. Ironically, of course, it’s kids that want the most colourful drinks and snacks.

Colour 104 is another to watch out for. Also called quinoline yellow, it’s a synthetic coal tar dye used to create a greenish yellow tinge, and can cause rashes, asthma and hyperactivity. It’s especially recommended that aspirin-sensitive people avoid this additive. If you see colour 105, or E105, keep that product back immediately – it’s an additive that has been banned in both Europe and the US. It has been found to be harmful and linked to non-atopic asthma.

E107 has been banned in a few countries, including the US, Japan, Austria and Sweden, but is not subject to a complete EU ban. E111 has been forbidden in Europe since the late 1970s. It is an orange dye that is often found in food like instant soup, raspberry flavoured desserts and other products and dessert toppings. E121, also called citrus red, has been warned as a possible carcinogen. E122 or carmoisine is banned in the US and Canada, as well as a couple more countries, and has a rap sheet that looks very similar to that of 104. You need to watch for this in a host of products from cookies to wine to sauces to pickles to ice creams to jams – it’s a versatile food colour. It’s also called Food Red 3, though the number system is generally used for most of what we see on the supermarket shelves. It’s even in some cough syrups.

The list is very long and what stands out is that much of what has been banned in European countries, USA and Japan is fair game in South American, African and other Asian countries, including India. When we see what looks like some kind of code in the list of ingredients, it’s only human to skip over that and go to the calorie count and the number of grams of trans fats in the product. But as we get busier and turn to convenient instant meals when we’re just too tried to toss a meal from fresh ingredients, we gloss over what the series of letters and numbers actually mean.

Some of it is perfectly fine and does us no harm. Some of it can possibly cause harm if you’re allergic to any part of what it’s made from. Some of it can hurt you if you’re just unlucky. Research regarding these food additives has by no means been enough to give us all the answers. However, we’re responsible for what we put into our bodies. Be informed. Find out what you’re snacking on. In the long run, wouldn’t you rather be safe than sorry?