It’s a given fact that food additives are almost essential in our daily lives. Without them we wouldn´t have the possibility to enjoy food from across the world, and we wouldn’t be able to keep food for too long neither. However, throughout the years, some questions have been raised as to whether these food additives were o weren’t harmless for our health. There is no specific answer. Some are, and some aren´t.
Thankfully, we can rely on the expertise of the World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the U.S or the European Union to provide us with accurate information on this matter. It’s also their task to approve the commercialization of food additives, or to ban certain chemicals from entering the market.
Among all the food additives banned in Europe, here are a few examples: azodicarbonamide, bromated flour, brominated vegetable oil, olestra, ractopamine and ammonium phosphates. The process of establishing whether or not a food additive is harmless is constantly being carried out by the organizations we mentioned above. Yet, some side effects can sometimes go unnoticed.
This is the case of phosphates. Very useful, they are widely used in the food processing industry, especially when it comes to hydrating fish products. Indeed, their chemical properties optimize the moisturization, improve the texture and have beneficial effects on the protein contained in such products. However, it has been proven by several studies that consuming too much phosphate could be dangerous for our health. It appeared that over the past 20 years, our intake of phosphate went from 500mg to 1000mg a day. This would not represent a problem if this chemical was not known for causing organ calcification in renal patients, which is the reason why people who suffering from kidney disease are being advised to limit their daily intake of phosphate. Even though this chemical is useful, as we said it, we chose to develop phosphate-free food additives, in order for our clients not to suffer from any side effects.
The same applies for sulfites. People suffering from asthma can react badly when consuming products processed with this kind of chemical. Most people are unaware of such things; this is why they usually don’t even pay attention to these details while doing their grocery shopping, when the easiest and safest thing to do would be simply to switch to a food processed with sulfite-free additives such as the ones we produce at pH7.
