The roles of food additives in life

Food additives are indispensable ingredients in food processing, almost all processed foods with additives. Such as cola color is toned by caramel; sweet relies on cyclamate; pure fermented beer relies on the carbon dioxide to have preservative effect. Even the cooking oil inseparable from our daily lives contain antioxidants, salt contains anti-caking agent, soy sauce, vinegar and preservatives; cookie has bulking agents; ice creams have emulsifiers; acidity regulators in cola; etc.

Abuse of food additives have hazards. Food additives are not terrible, but illegal to add and the abuse of food additives is terrible. Yes, we know additives in food can improve the stability of food quality, effective in preventing food spoilage and improving food properties, but it should not be excessive. For example, preservatives have chemical interactions of killing microorganisms or inhibit their reproduction, although most preservatives are nontoxic and low toxicity, but excessive doses is harmful. Therefore, food safety problems are due to overweight, exceeding scope use and the use of unqualified food additives. They are considered to be safe as long as the manufacturers use food additives in the context of national standard.

Food coloring, as the name suggests, is to change the color of the material. Dyes can be divided to natural food dyes and synthetic food dyes. Some foods in the process need to be heated, which led to its original color lost. In order to make it themselves, you need to add a certain amount of food colours in food. Currently water soluble pigments are used mostly. It is a kind of synthetic synthetic food dyes. There are also contained special colouring of the pigment itself in these allowed to use synthetic pigments. These special food colorants are deposite, known as Lake. It has self-limiting features. So too much quantities make the colours not natural.

Commonly used food sweeteners are: sodium saccharin, cyclohexyl-amino-sulfonic acid (sodium cyclamate), maltitol, sorbitol, xylitol, etc. Sweeteners are popular in a lot of food, such as beverages, pickles, bread, pastries, cookies, ice cream, preserves, sweets, condiments, canned meat and almost common food in the daily life are combined with different kinds of sweeteners.

Enzymes are used mainly in the food industry of meat flavor. And proteases is the more widely used one. Protease's primary role is to improve the quality of the meat flavor.