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Food Additives. “More Nutritious than ever” “New improved flavor” “Stays fresher longer” What are Food additives? Are they good? or Bad?. What are Food Additives?. Any substance a food producer intentionally adds to a food for a specific purpose Around 3,000 additives are used.
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Food Additives • “More Nutritious than ever” • “New improved flavor” • “Stays fresher longer” • What are Food additives? Are they good? or Bad?
What are Food Additives? • Any substance a food producer intentionally adds to a food for a specific purpose • Around 3,000 additives are used
Natural Additives • Occur naturally in food and plants • Salt, sugar, seaweed, acids
Artificial, or Synthetic Additives • Made in a laboratory • Chemicals are joined or modified in the lab
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
Food Storage • 200 years ago we had to eat fresh foods • Can be natural or artificial • Keeps food preserved prevents mold, bacteria, spoiling, browning…
Increase Healthfulness • Fortification: adding a nutrient not normally found in a food
Increase Healthfulness • Restoration: reestablish the products original nutritional value
Increase Healthfulness • Enrichment: Includes restoration of nutrients as well as the addition of more nutrients • Thiamin, niacin, riboflavin, iron…
Increase Healthfulness • Nutrification: Adding nutrients to a food with low nutrient value to replace a meal • Nutrified bars and shakes
Make Food Appealing • Color: added to drinks, cereal, jams…… • Most are Synthetic: identified with a number • Very few are natural
Make Food Appealing • Flavor: 2,000 of the 3,000 additives are for flavor • Demand for natural flavors far exceeds supply • MSG
Make Food Appealing • Sweeteners: most common of all flavor enhancers, improve aroma and taste • Nutritive and Nonnutritive
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
Make Food Appealing • Nonnutritive Sweeteners: Artificial, no calories, taste sweet • Low-calorie and calorie free products
Make Food Appealing • Splenda uses sucralose: 600 time sweeter then sugar, produces no calories, chemical change to sugar molecule, can cook with it
Make Food Appealing • Sweet’N Low uses Saccharin: 300 times sweeter, made from petroleum products, can cook with it
Make Food Appealing • Aspartame: 200 times sweeter, no calories, cannot use in cooking, loses sweetness in beverages
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
Aspartame Facts • Approved intake is 50mg/kg of body wt/day • 12 oz diet soda: 225mg • 8 oz yogurt: 80mg • 4 ozjello: 32mg • 18kg/40lb child would have to consume 4 12oz cans of soda or nine 8oz glasses of fruit
Aspartame Facts • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqIFDoOwSFM • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrahc-KfBRo&feature=related
Processing & Preparation • Improve texture, a stabilizer to keep mixture balanced • Peanut butter and ice cream
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
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
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
Allergies • Sulfites- preservative FDA reduced the amount allowed • MSG- flavor • BHT- preservative
Poor Eating Habits • Increase fortified food decrease a diversified diet • Increase fortified food, challenge to determine nutritional balance
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
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