For centuries, human beings have experimented with ways to preserve food. Sometimes it was by using honey, oil, alcohol or salt; or alternately vegetables, fruits and meats were pickled, dried or smoked. But newer substances have come to dominate the markets – our food can now sit on the shelf for longer than ever before, its edibility unnaturally prolonged by additives the average consumer knows little about. And it’s not just preservatives. Processed foods today are chock full of a range of additives including bulking agents, glazing agents, stabilizers, thickeners, artificial flavourings, emulsifiers and food colouring. Even though we heedlessly consume these additives, their long term side effects remain poorly understood, cautions Consultant Dietician Sigrid de Silva.
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| People need to be more aware when buying processed foods. Pic by Indika Handuwala |
The real surge in the usage of food additives began in the 1950s, says Sigrid, pinpointing an explosion in chemicals being used very liberally for the preservation of the food. These chemicals were for most part meant to prevent the growth of organisms such as bacteria and fungi that would result in spoilage. From then on we’ve seen more and more and types of additives appear on the market – and now many are about tickling the appetite by adding flavour, texture and colour to the food. “Today we can’t even imagine what is really in our food,” says Sigrid, adding that keeping up to date can prove an impossible task for a regular consumer.
Why make the effort? Some of these modern preservatives have been linked with respiratory problems, as well as heart disease and intestinal and bowel disorders. Certain food colourings such as Blue 2, Red 3 and Green 3 are suspected carcinogens while Yellow 6 may cause sometimes severe hypersensitivity reactions. Caramel colouring which is used to darken soft drinks and beers is produced with ammonia and contains 2-methylimidazole and 4-methylimidazole.
Last year, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which comes under the World Health Organization, concluded that 2- and 4-methylimidazole are “possibly carcinogenic to humans.” Strong campaigns in the US have since led the manufacturers in some states to promise they will reduce or phase out the amount of ammonia-caramel colouring in drinks – studies have found that many famous brands have as much as ten times the FDA recommended limit in their drinks.
Some additives are dangerous to specific groups of people. Sulfites such as Sulfur dioxide and Sodium bisulfite, which you might find in wine and some dried fruits or vegetables, are considered possible irritants for asthmatics while studies have suggested that synthetic preservatives and artificial colouring aggravate symptoms of ADD and ADHD in young children. You can find these details and a comprehensive list of safe and unsafe additives on the website for The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a US organisation that campaigns for food safety. (www.cspinet.org). Much more research is required to understand what the long term effects of consuming these additives are.
In the meantime, young children remain particularly vulnerable. Several studies, such as a widely quoted one in the reputable British medical journal The Lancet in 2007, showed that certain colourings or sodium benzoate can adversely affect children between the ages of 3 – 9. In this light, severely restricting your child’s intake of junk food is tough, but a necessary step, says Sigrid. If your child is displaying symptoms of severe allergies or is generally unwell after eating specific foods, you might want to consider putting him or her onto a low additive diet under the supervision of a qualified dietician.
This diet which relies heavily on natural, unprocessed foods has been known to help reduce symptoms such as hyperactivity in children. It’s also worth noting that early and therefore longer exposure to some additives put individuals at a greater risk of developing serious diseases when they’re older.
CSPI recommends that in general, one should avoid Sodium nitrite, Saccharin/Aspartame/Acesulfame-K, caffeine, olestra and food dyes. But simply overindulging in sugar and salt can do as much harm, says Sigrid.
You have to be on your guard. Salt sometimes can be found in unexpected places. Some manufacturers employ a process known as ‘plumping’ – injecting salt and other ingredients into raw meats (particularly chicken) to enhance flavour and increase the weight of the meat sold. To see if you’re about to buy such a product, check the fine print and the nutrition facts label. If it says ‘flavoured with up to 10% of a solution’ or ‘up to 15% chicken broth,’ consider yourself forewarned. This piece of meat could contain five times the amount of salt than untreated meat. Alternately, meat might be treated with Sodium nitrate to keep it looking good and tasting fresh, except the additive has been linked with cancer.
“Where is your food coming from?” asks Sigrid, explaining that it’s an important question because different countries have different rules about what additives are permitted in packaged foods. In the European Union, E numbers are used to identify additives with the safety assessment and approval being the responsibility of the European Food Safety Authority. In Sri Lanka, The Food Act of 1980 demands that the chemical name of the food additive, the INS number (International Numbering System) or E number be provided – so additives banned in Europe are generally banned here as well. INS numbers generally correspond to E numbers for the same compound – e.g. INS 102, Tartrazine, is also E-102. It’s worth noting however that an INS numbers might refer not to a single compound but a group of similar compounds. “The list is constantly evolving!” says Sigrid.
But this doesn’t always allay the concerns of savvy consumers. E102 (also known as tartrazine) is a widely used yellow food dye found in a variety of products from coloured fizzy drinks to instant puddings, sauces, marmalade, mustard and even in the shells of medicinal capsules. Though it is banned in Austria and Norway, it is very common in the UK and might easily be imported into Sri Lanka. A rash of cases in the 1970s lead researchers to claim tartrazine sensitivity was linked with urticarial (marked by rashes and hives) and asthma. Other reactions can include migraine, blurred vision, itching and rhinitis.
In the end, “food additives offer great concern,” says Sigrid, explaining that for consumers the great danger is actually ignorance. “For years we used honey and salt to preserve our foods, but now new additives are added every year.” She confesses that even professionals like her find keeping up on additive research a “constant study.” “People need to be more aware when they buy processed food,” she says. The longer the ingredient list and the more unintelligible it is, the more careful you should be.
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