Health and Fitness Information Center

Food Additives

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Some of these substances offer indisputable health benefits, but most additives are used solely to make foods more attractive and palatable to consumers. Surveys show that few things worry consumers more than additives, particularly "chemicals" or "artificial ingredients" in foods. The question is whether these fears are well founded.

Our food supply is more closely scrutinized and additives more strictly regulated than ever before. In the "good old days" a century ago, eating was really risky, since foods weren't well preserved or carefully handled. Adulteration of foods was common - for instance, toxic metals were used in food coloring, and copper sulfate in bread. No one claims that such acutely toxic compounds are being added to our foods today. Instead, consumers worry about long-term safety.

Their fears have been heightened in recent years by the banning of the artificial sweetener cyclamate and substances approved by the FDA that were subsequently shown to cause cancer in animals. In addition, food scientists are well as consumers are concerned about the health implications of "indirect" additives - that is, substances that find their way into foods during packaging and storage.

The most commonly used additives are sugar, salt, and corn syrup, which together with baking soda, pepper, and a dozen other substances, make up about 98 percent (by weight) of all additives in the United States. Notice that these are all "natural". Yet natural substances can be health hazards - just look at sassafras bark extract (known as safrole and formerly used to flavor root beer) or aflatoxin (found in a mold that grows on peanuts), both known as carcinogens.

On the other hand, there's no reason to worry about the majority of artificial ingredients. Laboratory-made vitamins and some flavors, for instance, are exact replicas of natural substances, and since they have identical chemical structures, the body can't tell them apart. Other chemicals have no natural counterparts, and while this isn't necessarily bad, they arouse the most fear in consumers.