Have you ever thought about how many food additives you can eat in a day?
A small bread in the morning, a box of yogurt in the afternoon, and a popsicle in the evening. In this ordinary day, you have probably eaten dozens of food additives. Sound scary?
Food additives don’t sound like “good things”. Why should food additives be added? Is it really safe to eat so many food additives in a day?
According to the definition of my country’s Food Safety Law, food additives refer to: artificially synthesized or natural substances added to food for the purpose of improving food quality, color, aroma, and taste, as well as for antisepsis, preservation, and processing technology. Nutritional enhancers, food flavors, base substances in gum-based candies, and processing aids for the food industry are also included.
Looking at it this way, food additives themselves are well-intentioned, and they are meant to make food taste better, look better, and be more convenient. Food additives added in accordance with the regulations and amounts are safe as long as they meet the national use standards. For example, in the carbonated beverages we drink, carbon dioxide is also an additive, which acts as a preservative.
Some people may ask, in recent years, food safety problems have emerged one after another, and each time it is because of the addition of “xxx” that endangers health. But food additives want to say: I don’t take this blame. Sudan red, melamine, hanging white block, etc. are not food additives, but illegal additives.
However, from the consumer’s point of view, there will definitely be such doubts: Then I want to eat some natural food, can’t I?
Many people have a general perception that food in the past was all natural and without additives, but in fact, food additives have existed since ancient times. For example, to order tofu in brine is to use brine (mainly composed of magnesium chloride, sodium chloride, calcium chloride and magnesium sulfate, etc.) as a coagulant. Potassium carbonate creates an alkaline environment, making the noodles more chewy.
If you’re trying to figure out what’s in the food you’re eating, here are some tips.
First of all, in the ingredient list, the labeling order of various ingredients is marked in descending order of the amount added. That is to say, the higher the ingredients in the front, the more content. Utilizing this, it is possible to distinguish the juice content in the juice drink.
If you don’t want to eat sugar substitutes, you can pay attention to terms such as saccharin, sweetener, aspartame, and sucralose in the ingredient list.
In addition, compared with adults, children need a higher safety factor. Therefore, a more conservative and cautious attitude should be adopted for children’s food, and more attention should be paid to whether the ingredient list contains too many pigments.
As for the preservatives that everyone talks about, there is no need to worry too much. Preservatives such as potassium sorbate and sodium benzoate are usually added to foods seen on the market. These two most widely used preservatives are generally excreted with urine after being ingested by the human body.
When choosing food, we should not only pay attention to the ingredient list, but also pay attention to the data on the nutrition label. Another ingredient that has attracted attention frequently in recent years is trans fatty acids. At present, my country’s national standards require that prepackaged foods with hydrogenated vegetable oil in their raw materials must label the content of trans fatty acids. Even if some foods use “hydrogenated oil” as a raw material, they can be marked as “0 “.
If it is not stated on the nutritional label that trans fat is 0, then pay attention to the hidden trans fat in the ingredient list, such as nouns such as non-dairy creamer, hydrogenated vegetable oil, creamer, margarine, shortening, cocoa butter substitute, etc. .
There is another thing worth noting in the nutrition facts table, that is “NRV%”. “NRV%” is a nutrient reference value, which refers to the content of this nutrient in 100 grams of food, accounting for the proportion of the daily intake of this nutrient. For example, if the NRV% of 100 grams of the food marked on a package of snacks is 20%, it means that eating 100 grams of the snacks has already consumed 20% of the total fat required for the day. By understanding NRV%, you can quickly calculate your daily intake of various nutrients, and you can also control the amount of snacks you eat.
