Benefits of Food Additive

Written by Adam Bronfin

A lot of the posts we've put on this blog and on our twitter have portrayed food additives in a negative way. But, in fact, food additives play a critical role in the agricultural world and allows for millions if not billions of people to eat nutritious meals everyday. We all know that all foods will eventually spoil if they aren’t eaten. Because of this, historically, famines have often been caused by food spoiling between harvests or during transportation. In fact, many common foods were developed as ways to extend the life of fast-spoiling foods. Cheese was most likely invented as a way of preserving milk. Cured meats like ham, bacon, and sausage keep longer than uncured meat, enabling it to survive long journeys or last through the winter. Pickling keeps vegetables from going bad, and adding sugar to fruit keeps it fresh. In fact, we still call sugared fruit “preserves.” Even alcoholic beverages are a form of preserved food—beer is basically fermented wheat, and wine is fermented grapes.

Today we still want our food to stay fresh for as long as possible as it allows for more humans to eat more food. Bread used to become stale and moldy within a few days, but today bread contains preservatives such as calcium propionate to keep them fresh longer. Calcium propionate is a chemical, but it occurs naturally in many foods and dairy products. In lab tests, scientists fed rats the chemical at up to 4% of their total diet for a whole year with no ill effects. BHA and BHT are henolic compounds or in more simple terms they are common preservatives in foods with fats and oils, like potato chips and crackers. They’re antioxidants— chemicals that prevent damage from oxygen (oxidation). All of these chemicals have the same purpose— keeping our food from spoiling.

In later posts we go more in depth on BHA and BHT as well as calcium propionate, but we just wanted to post a quick over view of where we're planning on doing our research.