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Understanding Food Additives Types

Food additives are non-nutritive substances added to food in small amounts to provide flavor, color, texture or storage properties. There are around 3000 food additives worldwide used to maintain nutritional quality, enhance stability, make food more attractive, and aid processing. Additives include antioxidants to prevent oxidation, colorants to impart or maintain color, emulsifiers to mix immiscible liquids, flavors as flavor enhancers from natural and synthetic sources, and preservatives to arrest microbial growth and prevent spoilage.

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62 views2 pages

Understanding Food Additives Types

Food additives are non-nutritive substances added to food in small amounts to provide flavor, color, texture or storage properties. There are around 3000 food additives worldwide used to maintain nutritional quality, enhance stability, make food more attractive, and aid processing. Additives include antioxidants to prevent oxidation, colorants to impart or maintain color, emulsifiers to mix immiscible liquids, flavors as flavor enhancers from natural and synthetic sources, and preservatives to arrest microbial growth and prevent spoilage.

Uploaded by

ATHIRA M
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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MODULE 3-FOOD ADDITIVES

Food additives are the non-nutritional substance which is added to the food generally in
small quantities to provide flavour, colour, texture and storage properties. There are
around 3000 food additives in the world.

The need for the use of food additives is to maintain the nutritional quality, To enhance
stability with resulting reduction in waste, to make food more attractive, and to provide
efficient aids in processing, packing and transport.

The different types of food additives are:-

Antioxidants

They are the substance which is added to the fats and oil to prevent oxidation. Two
types of antioxidants

a) Natural antioxidants
Eg: - Vitamin C (Ascorbic acid)
Vitamin E (Tocopherol)
b) Synthetic antioxidants
Eg: - BHA (Butylated Hydroxy Anisol)
BHT (Butylated Hydroxy Toluene)

Colouring Agents

These are the agents to produce particular colour to the product which improve or
impart colour of food products. The original colour of food products may get bleach due to
the process of heat and pasteurization. This colour loss is rectified by addition of colorants
either naturally or synthetically.

a) Natural colorants
– Turmeric
– Saffron
– Carotene
– Caramel
– Annatto (Cheese, butter etc)
b) Synthetic colorants
- Coaltar (carbonated beverages)

Emulsifiers (Surface active agents, Surfactants)

It is the agents which are used to mix to immiscible liquid, which otherwise do not
mix properly. They are mainly used in Bakery industry, confectionary and diary industry. In
all this industries oil phase is mixed with water. So enhancing the proper mixing of
emulsifiers is necessary.

Natural emulsifiers

Eg:-Lecithin (egg and milk)

Synthetic emulsifiers

Eg:- Monosodium Steartae, Proplyene glycol

Flavours as Flavour Enhancers

Flavours are the compounds which are added to foods to give particular flavour to the
food product. They came from both natural sources and synthetic sources. The natural flavour
includes Spices, herbs, leaves and some medicinal plants. The use of natural flavaour in large
scale industries is limited due to different reasons. They are

a) Variation in flavour with the area and season of production


b) High cost
c) Large quantities of spices are required to obtain even to get a small quantity of
flavour.

Synthetic flavours have replaced natural flavours due to their high uniformity and low
concentration.

Eg: - Amyl Acetate


Ethyl Butyrate
Mono Sodium Glutamate (MSG)

Preservatives

The process of keeping the quality of keeping the food as such is called preservatives.
It is the substances which are added to the food for arresting or preventing the unwanted
microbial growth, enzymatic and chemical reaction.

Two types of preservatives:-

Class 1 – salt, sugar, vinegar and spices

Class 2- Artificial preservatives – sulphur, sodium benzoate, sodium propionate

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