Effects And Dangers Of Food Additives For Our Body And Health

Introduction

Food additives are often over looked as people believe they are harmless and only come in very few forms, but in reality there many different forms of food additives and a lot of them are not as harmless as people thinks they are. The aim of this research task is to bring to light some of the effects and dangers food additives have on your body and health. It is also to make people more aware of what they put into their bodies and hopefully make them more conscious about making good decisions. Additives in food are substances added to enhance flavour, colour, texture and nutritional value. Another form of food additives is adding substances to extend the shelf life and quality of foods. Not all additives are bad, as some foods lack certain important elements and can therefore be fortified and enhanced with vitamins, minerals and antioxidants making them better and more beneficial to people. Additives or “E numbers” as they are commonly known, are additives that approved in European countries, but for other countries they are just known as numbers and might not be approved in Europe, but are in other countries. They are found in some form in almost all of the processed food that we eat on a regular basis and most of the time we unaware of the numerous different additives found in one product. Being aware of what we put into our bodies needs to become more important to us, as we do not know the effects some substances have and what they can end up doing to our body.

Effects

Although you don’t often hear about all the effects of additives on the body, they are there. They can vary in severity and are very often overlooked as people don’t know the actual cause of the problem. Additives can be certain products that your body is allergic to, such as the sulphides in wines or tartrazine in chips. These additives can have serious effects on your body including swelling, rashes and eventually even death. There are 3 main ways of classifying additives and they are colourants, favourants and preservatives. Each one has there own purpose in each instant.

Colourants

Colourants add colour to to food or drinks. They can be found in liquid, gel, paste or powder form. They can be both natural and synthetic. Natural forms of colourants come from sources such as flowers, seeds, fruits and vegetables and even insects, such as the cochineal insect which provides a deep red colour. These additives are not harmful in any way to the body was they are natural and organic. They also do not cause the food any harm in such that the food is unchanged except for the colour. These are the types of colourants we should add to our food if we want colour in our food. Natural additives could also be beneficial as they might contain vitamins and minerals that get added when the process of dying is taking place. However there are synthetic dyes that are more commonly used and are becoming ever increasingly prevalent in every thing that we eat. An example of one of these very popular colourants that also happen to be incredibly bad for your health is tartrazine. Tartrazine is the orange colourant added to everything from Oros to Niknaks. It is incredibly bad for your health and many people are allergic to it.

It can cause asthma and many other diseases and disorders such as migraines, thyroid problems, ADHD and even cancer, this is all because it is entirely artificial and offers no health benefit what so ever. Before buying foods, especially heavily processed foods, people should read the ingredient list to find out if the product contains tartrazine and in what quantity it is in in the product. People should stray away from foods that have unnatural colours and can be identified as having extra food colourants added as there affect on the body is so harmful. The main consumers of foods containing colourants are young children, as most sweets are coloured using artificial colourants instead of natural ones, as natural ones give off a more dull colour and are therefore less attractive to children.

Flavourants

Flavourants are substances that are added to foods and drinks to enhance the specific flavour of something. They are an inexpensive way of making something taste like something else without actually adding that specific product. They play an important role in the buying and consuming of foods as people want to buy food that’s taste is enjoyable as food is meant to be enjoyed. Flavourants are added to counteract the loss of flavour during the process of processing the food. They can also be added to enhance an already present flavour. They can be both natural and synthetic just like colourants are.

The natural flavourants are salt, herbs, spices, fruits and other aromatic natural products. Artificial flavourants, such as MSG are bad as they are frequently found in most processed foods. MSG can cause headaches, nausea and a tingling numbness, as it is toxic to your body in high doses. Without food flavourants, food would be tasteless and boring to eat, so instead of buying bland food, rather try buy foods that contain natural favourants or if not, stay away from foods containing extremely high quantities of the bad favlourants like MSG. An easy way to avoid eating foods packed full of flavourants is to eat organic products that do not contain any flavourants.

Preservatives

Preservatives are chemicals or natural substances that can be added to any form of food to prolong the life and freshness of that food. They can come in many different forms and there are many different types of preservatives. Preservatives have been used for hundreds of years to prolong the shelf life of perishable foods, these were however, natural preservatives that had no side effects on the body. They were salt, vinegar, sugar and lemon juice can also be used. These preservatives can also double as flavourants that are healthy and natural to eat. In todays day in age, these natural preservatives are no longer used and we have moved into an era of using chemicals to preserve the length that our food remains edible for. Most preservatives are bad, as they make food ‘safe’ to eat for way longer than what it would normally be able to last. This unnatural as if the food was not lasting that long before it was processed, then how dangerous are the chemicals being added to make it last some much longer past its use by date.

These chemicals are not just singled down to processed foods, but fruit and vegetables are also sprayed with chemicals to prolong their life and stop the growth of bacterias, yeasts and moulds. Preserving foods can range from one of the greatest discoveries of pasteurisation through to sulphuring, which is burning sulphurs in an enclosed room with the products.

Conclusion

Therefore in conclusion additives are mostly bad for your health as your body absorbs them and they end up causing serious health defects on your body. They should be avoided as much as possible in our day to day lives and parents should limit the amount of additive containing foods their children consume on a regular basis. Wash your fruits and vegetables thoroughly before consuming them as you will not only be consuming preservatives, but also pesticides and insecticides that are sprayed on them. Practising this on a daily basis will ensure you keep your body healthy and functioning to its best abilities. Not only do food additives effect the body, but they can also make foods last for an unnatural length of time which can not be healthy as the food was never meant to last that long in the first place.