What are food additives?

n today's food industry, food additives, flavors and colors are among the most useful ingredients. To help you understand better, the following article we will share with you in more details!

1. What are food additives?

With the advent of packaged foods, food additives played an important role in providing a safe source of food as well as satisfying the needs of consumers.
Food additive means any substance, natural or synthetic, intentionally added to a food for technological purposes in the processing, packaging, transport or preservation of that food.

2. Commonly used food additives

Acids: Food acids are added to make the flavor of the food "sharper", and they also act as preservatives and antioxidants. Common food acids are vinegar, citric acid, tartaric acid, malic acid, fumaric acid, lactic acid.
Acidity regulators: Acidity regulators are used to change or control the acidity and alkalinity of foods.
Anti-caking agents: Anti-caking agents keep powders, such as powdered milk, from clumping.
Anti-foaming agents: Anti-foaming agents reduce or prevent foaming in foods.
Antioxidants: Antioxidants such as vitamin C act as preservatives by inhibiting the effects of oxygen on food and are generally beneficial for health.
+ Qualitys: Mass-forming substances such as starch are added to increase the number / volume of a food without affecting its nutritional value.
Food colorants: Food colorants are added to foods to replace colors lost during manufacturing or to make the food more eye-catching.
+ Color preservatives: In contrast to colorants, color preservatives are used to preserve the existing color of food.
Emulsifiers: Emulsifiers allow water and cooking oils to remain mixed together in the repair, such as in mormon, cream and milk.
+ Flavorings: Flavoring agents are additives that give food a specific taste or smell and can be generated from natural or artificial substances.
Cereal Flour Treatment Agents: Cereal flour treatment agents are added to the cereal flour (flour, barley, etc.) to improve its color or to use when baking.
+ Preservatives: Preservatives prevent or inhibit the spoilage of food caused by the action of mold, bacteria or other microorganisms.
Stabilizers: Stabilizers, thickeners and gels, such as agar or pectin (used in some fruit jams), give the food a thick and firm texture. While they are not true emulsifiers, they do help to make the emulsifiers more stable.
Sweeteners: Sweeteners are added to foods to create a sweet taste. Non-sugar sweeteners are added to keep foods low in calories (calories) but still have the sweetness of sugar or because they have beneficial effects for patients with diabetes or tooth decay.
Thickeners: Thickeners are substances that, when added to a food, increase the plasticity without significantly altering the other properties of the food.

3. What is the color of the food?

There are 2 types of food coloring: natural food color and artificial food color. Natural food color is the color extracted from many fruits and plants. Ingredients such as the fruit, stems, leaves or roots of the plant can give a natural food color. Artificial food coloring has been used by humans for centuries, the first artificial food colorant was created in 1856 from coal tar. Today, artificial food colors are made mainly from petroleum and petroleum products. Because of the increasing demand for food, artificial food colors are gradually dominating over natural colors.

4. What is aromatherapy?

Flavoring in food is the sensory perception of food and is determined mainly by the chemical senses of taste and smell of the trigeminal nervous system, responsible for detecting chemical stimuli. in the mouth and throat, as well as the perception of temperature and texture of the food play a very important role in the formation of general perception of food.
The taste of food with the above interpretation can be replaced by natural flavors or artificial flavors.
Flavoring is defined as a compound that provides a taste similar to the taste of another substance, or replaces or enhances its properties, making it sweet, sour, or more intense.
Dear friends, I hope that the above information will help you better understand food additives, flavors and colors. Depending on the characteristics of each product, different substances will be needed.