This article introduces the facts about food additives and explains the argument for the Chinese food additive to help you better understand Chinese and world food additive application conditions.
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What is Food Additive?
There is a saying that food additive is the spirit of the food industry for the insiders while the common people’s nerve is jangled by the negative statement about food additive. Especially a saying that there seems abuse of food additives in the Chinese food industry, which creates tension among Chinese people and also foreign prejudice to Chinese food additives.
What is the food additive and what is the true condition of Chinese food additive on earth? Let’s find the answer together!
Food additives are synthetic or natural substances added to food to enhance quality, appearance, and taste, preserve freshness, and facilitate the processing of food. They include nutritional fortifiers, flavor enhancers, base materials in confectionery, and processing aids for the food industry.
Is it necessary to use additives in food?
To discuss the necessity of the food additive is actually to discuss its functions and importance. Food additive is developed together with the food industry, showcasing their functions in 2 major aspects: to satisfy the demand for food processing technology and the demand for taste and nutrition.
There are the major purposes of using the food additive:
1. Preserving food and preventing spoilage;
2. Improving food quality and stability;
3. Improving sensory characteristics like color, smell, taste, and shape;
4. Maintaining or boosting nutritional value;
5. Taking as the necessary ingredients of certain special foods, such as potassium bicarbonate, the acidity regulator is used in infant formula foods.
6. Expanding food varieties and bringing convenience to life;
7. In favor of food processing and accommodating to the mechanized and automated production;
8. Catering to specific requirements, for example, the diabetic is not allowed to eat sugar, so Nutrient-free or low-caloric sweetening agents like sucralose and aspartame are good alternatives.
The above introduction might be too theoretical for you to understand, I will give some examples, therefore you will understand if the food additive is necessary or not.
In ancient times, there were no preservatives so people could only buy the food nearby. Only pickled, smoked, dry, or fermented food could be transported over long distances or preserved for a long time. However, the presence of preservatives changed the condition, those perishable foods could take long journeys, and people can enjoy the various flavors from all over the world at home.
Besides, sweetening agent for the diabetic is another great example. Sucralose, aspartame, and other sweetening agents satisfy these patient’s demand for sugar but would not supply too much energy which is fatal for the diabetic.
Now you should have the answer to this question. Without food additives, humans will not lose a life, just like in ancient times. However, today under the great industrialization, food additive exerts significant influences on our life.
Why is there an argument about Chinese food additives?
A saying that there is abuse of Chinese food additives because many food additives are prohibited in developed countries but are still in use in China, which brings tension among Chinese people and also causes prejudice internationally.
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Actually, there are about food additives allowed to be used in China, and about in America. Other countries like Japan also allow more food additives in use. Each additive must be evaluated and tested strictly and systematically before being applied in actual use, which is the same in every country.
There are different additive species and quantity standards in different countries’ food industries. Some food additives in China even have stricter limits compared to international organizations or developed countries.
For instance, the limit for Potassium Sorbate (a preservative) in Chinese jelly is 0.5 grams per kilogram, while the EU allows 1 gram per kilogram. Conversely, some additives are permitted by international standards or developed nations but not approved in China. For example, Peroxybenzoic Acid (flour bleaching agent) is acceptable internationally and in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, but China has banned its use. These variations highlight the diverse regulations governing food additives worldwide.
Therefore, we can judge a country’s food additive simply by a few specific indexes is low or high, or if a country uses a certain additive or not. That’s not scientific and objective.
Some people feel upset as there are arguments like “there is exceeding xxx found in xxx food, which will cause serious result if used for long term”, hence, hate additives and hate them completely. That’s less rational.
As mentioned above, food additives undergo safety evaluations considering lifetime, daily, and extensive intake. Thus, additives used within standard limits don't pose risks from "long-term extensive" usage. Additives typically remains far from causing health hazards, as we don't consume excessive amounts of these substances daily throughout our lives.
Conclusion:
Used mostly for enhancing flavor and prolonging shelf life, additives are widely used in food products worldwide. Different countries have their own standards for the use of food additives, which was the explanation Haitian gave for the differences in their Japanese and Chinese ingredients. However, as the Chinese public becomes increasingly health-conscious, numerous controversies have erupted in recent years about the use of chemical additives alongside general food safety scandals.
The history of food additives can be traced back over 10,000 years with the discovery of salt, a natural preservative, from evaporated seawater. In the Han dynasty (206 BCE—220 CE), bittern, the liquid remaining after salt is harvested from saline brine, was used as a coagulant to make firm tofu. In the Northern Song dynasty (960—), people added nitrite to preserve meat, and potassium alum to make fried bread sticks. In the sixth century, Jia Sixie, a leading agronomist, recorded a method of using leaves as natural pigment to make cold noodles in his book Essential Techniques for the Common People (《齐民要术》), one of China’s oldest agricultural encyclopedias.
Food additives have been widely used in processed foods in China since the late s. At that time, preservatives, sweeteners, pigment, and other chemical food preservatives were sometimes sold in bulk in shops that also carried other chemical products like pesticide, leading many people to view food additives as dangerous or poisonous even today. In , the Ministry of Health (currently the National Health Commission of the PRC) released a set of sanitary standards for food additives, outlining the types of additives permitted and the appropriate dosage. In , the ministry released a set of national standards outlining limits on additive use.
However, the safety of food additives remains a major public concern. For instance, powdered monosodium glutamate (MSG), one of the most widely used flavor enhancers in the world, has been accused of causing health issues including hair loss, amnesia, and even cancer for more than four decades, despite evidence suggesting it is not dangerous to consume in moderation.
Despite the public aversion, sales of food additives continue to grow. A report from Qianzhan Industrial Research Institute estimated the total sales of food additives in reached over 134 billion yuan, with an annual growth rate of 5 percent. Another report from Huajing Research Institute in noted that the output of sweeteners in surpassed 230,000 tons, an increase of 10.5 percent from , due to growing demand for low-calorie sugar substitutes from health-conscious consumers and people with diabetes.
In contrast to the more than 4,000 legal food additives in the US, China has only legalized over 2,300 additives used in food, with just 10 new additives granted approval each year, which Cao Yanping, food and health professor at the Beijing Technology and Business University, believes can help alleviate the concerns of the public. “Ordinary people don’t know how food additives are made and how they get assessed [by the authorities],” says Cao, “so they tend to think, ‘If we have to use [food additives], then could we use less of it?’”
Some experts believe food additives have been unnecessarily demonized in China. Sun Baoguo, member of the Chinese Engineering Academy, noted during a lecture in Guangzhou in that about 80 percent of respondents in one survey blamed food safety issues on food additives, which Sun thought was misguided. Sun also pointed out legal food additives are often confused for illegal chemicals, like the melamine from China’s milk powder scandal, and emphasized that whether an additive was harmful depended on the dosage.
Cao agrees, “Everything can be harmful and toxic. You shouldn’t eat too much salt, sugar, oil or even drink too much water.”
Some unscrupulous vendors do use illegal additives to further enhance the flavor of their food and maximize their profits, as Xin regularly exposes in his videos. This also exacerbates public misunderstanding of legal additives. In , China Central Television exposed a brand of steamed wheat bread sold in supermarkets for using tartrazine, a synthetic dye banned from use in flour products, to give the bread an appetizing yellow color. In , the owner of a Zhejiang restaurant was charged for using 1,070mg/kg of aluminum potassium sulfate, over 10 times the legal amount, in making deep-fried dough sticks to enhance the flavor and cut costs. He was sentenced to detention for five months and fined 5,000 yuan.
The deep-rooted public aversion to additives also hurts legitimate businesses. Another food blogger, Liu Song, went viral this August with a video showing how vendors can use a spoonful of evaporated milk to give mutton soup a tantalizing white color that they would otherwise have to boil all night to achieve. Subsequently, a mutton soup restaurant owner on Douyin had to livestream her soup-making process for two days to prove that she boils her soup in the traditional method, after netizens flooded her page with accusations she was faking the color with additives.
In August, an article from the China Food Newspaper, a publication under the China Light Industry Association, criticized Xin for “selling anxiety” and “publicizing illegal methods” with his videos. But Jiang, the health vlogger, believes Xin is in the right for exposing abuses in the food industry and helping raise public awareness of illegal additives. According to Xin himself, his videos have been reported by users many times and Douyin had asked him in September to “improve” his content, after which he decided to delete his account.
Demand for additive-free products is also booming due to health concerns. According to an article from the Beijing News, Lechun, a Beijing-based yogurt brand marketed as containing zero food additives, witnessed its sales reach over 10 million yuan within three years after its establishment in . However, in , the State Administration for Market Regulation drafted a new regulation, which it opened for public feedback, suggesting to ban the use of terms like “zero additives” on food labels as it misleads customers about what food additives are.
Jiang estimates that her food expenses run are more than double those of an average person who doesn’t try to avoid additives, but doesn’t consider it a great hardship. “I don’t buy other stuff like beverages and snacks. I eat better, but not like those who say they eat delicacies,” she says. She believes that in the beginning of the reform period, people in China mostly ate in order to feel full, and accepted that some additives were necessary to preserve food, but these views are changing. “With our current technology we can preserve food without additives, but the costs are higher,” she says. “If our nation supports a zero-additive policy and offers subsidies, then the industry will take responsibility and develop a social conscience.”
Professor Cao, however, points out that “zero additives” doesn’t necessarily make the food better or healthier. He recalls that as a child, his family in Hebei used to make soy sauce in jars without any additives, but this sometimes developed harmful bacteria. “If food doesn’t contain additives, then you won’t know when it goes bad, but if bacteria has grown inside it could cause much more harm [than food additives] to your health,” explains Cao. “The vast majority of food-borne diseases in the world are caused by microbes.”
Cao doesn’t think people can live without additives. “Why do people prefer [store-bought] beverages to homemade juice? If you just make juice at home out of an apple or pear, do you like the taste? Probably not,” he says. “You can’t protest additives at the same time you enjoy the taste it creates. It makes no sense.”
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