1. Food Additives “More Nutritious than ever” “New improved flavor”
“Stays fresher longer”
What are Food additives? Are they good?
or Bad?

2. What are Food Additives?
Any substance a food producer intentionally adds to a food for a specific purpose
Around 3,000 additives are used

3. Natural Additives Occur naturally in food and plants
Salt, sugar, seaweed, acids

4. Artificial, or Synthetic Additives
Made in a laboratory
Chemicals are joined or modified in the lab

5. 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

6. Food Storage 200 years ago we had to eat fresh foods
Can be natural or artificial
Keeps food preserved prevents mold, bacteria, spoiling, browning…

7. Increase Healthfulness
Fortification: adding a nutrient not normally found in a food

8. Increase Healthfulness
Restoration: reestablish the products original nutritional value

9. Increase Healthfulness
Enrichment: Includes restoration of nutrients as well as the addition of more nutrients
Thiamin, niacin, riboflavin, iron…

10. Increase Healthfulness
Nutrification: Adding nutrients to a food with low nutrient value to replace a meal
Nutrified bars and shakes

11. Make Food Appealing Color: added to drinks, cereal, jams……
Most are Synthetic: identified with a number
Very few are natural

12. Make Food Appealing
Flavor: 2,000 of the 3,000 additives are for flavor
Demand for natural flavors far exceeds supply
MSG

13. Make Food Appealing
Sweeteners: most common of all flavor enhancers, improve aroma and taste
Nutritive and Nonnutritive

14. 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

15. Make Food Appealing
Nonnutritive Sweeteners: Artificial, no calories, taste sweet
Low-calorie and calorie free products

16. Make Food Appealing
Splenda uses sucralose: 600 time sweeter then sugar, produces no calories, chemical change to sugar molecule, can cook with it

17. Make Food Appealing
Sweet’N Low uses Saccharin: 300 times sweeter, made from petroleum products, can cook with it

18. Make Food Appealing
Aspartame: 200 times sweeter, no calories, cannot use in cooking, loses sweetness in beverages

19. Aspartame Facts
“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

20. 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

21. Aspartame Facts http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqIFDoOwSFM

22. Processing & Preparation
Improve texture, a stabilizer to keep mixture balanced
Peanut butter and ice cream

23. Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI)
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

24. 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

25. 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

26. Allergies Sulfites- preservative FDA reduced the amount allowed
MSG- flavor
BHT- preservative

27. Poor Eating Habits Increase fortified food decrease a diversified diet
Increase fortified food, challenge to determine nutritional balance

28. Unneeded additives
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

29. Safety & Improved Nutrition
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