Tuesday 9 August 2022 12:31 AM DR MEGAN ROSSI: Are chemicals added to food making YOU ill? trends now
Just how worried should we be about food additives such as emulsifiers, preservatives, colours and artificial sweeteners?
In the past, the additives used in food were essentially pretty simple — think of salt, used to help store food for longer.
But these days, pick up any processed food, from biscuits to curry sauce, and the list of chemical additives in it may exceed the ingredients you actually recognise as food. But are they bad for us?
Some people are definitely sensitive to certain food additives.
One of the most common sensitivities is to sulphites, which are primarily used as a preservative — you find them in foods including dried fruit; jams and dips such as guacamole; processed meats; fresh and frozen crustaceans such as prawns; as well as drinks, including soft drinks, cider, beer, wine and cordials. (Check labels for additive numbers E220-228 and E150b and 150d or names such as sulphur dioxide, sodium sulphite and sulphite ammonia caramel.)
Just how worried should we be about food additives such as emulsifiers, preservatives, colours and artificial sweeteners?
People with eczema and asthma seem to have a higher sensitivity to sulphites — one theory is they stimulate the nerves involved in breathing and irritate the respiratory tract.
The symptoms are not just gut specific — sufferers can experience hives, swelling, wheezing or a stuffy nose. Bad hangovers, too, have been associated with sulphites in wine.
These days pre-packed food sold in the UK must by law show clearly on the label if it contains sulphites above 10mg per kg or per litre.
Another problem is sensitivity to salicylates, which cause similar symptoms.
Salicylates are found naturally in herbs and spices, such as black pepper and cumin; in fruits, such as apples, strawberries and kiwi; and veg including asparagus and sweetcorn.
They are also in many drinks such as coffee, black tea and apple juice. If you’re concerned about dietary salicylates, it is best to see a dietitian as the amount can differ based on processing and season, making it risky to try to tackle it alone.
Then there are, of course, the food colourings linked to hyperactivity in some children, which is why the Food Standards Agency (FSA) has ruled that food and drink containing any of these six colours — sunset yellow (E110), quinoline yellow (E104), carmoisine (E122), allura red (E129), tartrazine (E102) or ponceau 4R (E124) — must carry a warning.
But some sensitivities may not be quite what they seem — following reported concerns about sensitivity to aspartame (e.g. headaches, dizziness and stomach upsets), the FSA commissioned research to investigate.
The study, published in 2015, showed that there was no difference in reported symptoms after eating an aspartame-containing cereal bar compared with a bar without aspartame.
If you don’t have a sensitivity to any food additive, should you worry about all these chemicals in our food? There are more than 300 additives that have been authorised by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) for use in food, which means they’ve undergone a rigorous safety assessment.
However, in 2008 the EFSA declared that all food additives authorised for use in the EU prior to 2009 must be re-evaluated for their safety. This has resulted in a number of changes. For example, from last week titanium dioxide (E171), a colouring added to sweets and baked goods, is no longer allowed in the EU and Northern Ireland (though it’s still used in the rest of the UK).
Despite this re-evaluation, many of the safety assessments haven’t considered the impact on our gut microbes that play such a key role in our health. That’s because a lot of these
