What Are Food Additives? 3 Ways to Protect Your Health
Food is supposed to be perishable!
Adding things to food to preserve and maintain freshness is nothing new. For thousands of years humans have added salt, herbs, sweeteners, acids and other treatments to prevent food from spoiling and prolong its usefulness.
Today, however, many of things being added to food are chemicals with potentially toxic effects on the body. And while health and safety standards exist to regulate food additives, the long-term effects of these substances are both poorly studied and reported to consumers.
Let’s dive into food additives and their safety, and 3 simple things you can do to protect your mental and physical health.
Why are food additives used?
A food additive is any substance that is including in the production or packaging of food that helps to maintain food safety, taste, texture, appearance or freshness. That covers a lot of ground!
Stabilizing food became very big business as grocery stores came to dominate the food system. The greater the distance between food producing areas and urban consumers, the higher the need for food additives to compensate for freshness and safety.
Buyer beware has never applied more than it does now with food additives. It is essential that you read the food labels if you want to make an informed choice about what chemicals are finding their way onto your plate.
Food Additive Safety
At a very broad and generalized level, most food additives in current use today are considered to carry low health risks. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) assess these health risks and set international standards for food additives.
The challenge is that individual people can be extremely sensitive to food additives or even develop specific allergies.
For example in Australia, 50 of the 400 approved food additives have been associated with reactions in people. These reactions include stomach pain, diarrhea, hyperactivity, insomnia, irritability, asthma, rhinitis, sinusitis, hives, itching, rashes and swelling (source).
One missing consideration in many of these assessments and safety requirements is the concept of chronic exposure. While food additives are assessed for their individual safety and effects, the risks of long term exposure and high dose rates can easily occur when over 73% of US food supply is comprised of ultra-processed foods.
This means it is also relatively easy to consume a potentially toxic brew of food additives that may interact with one another. The by-products and results of such food additive interactions within the human body are poorly understood.
More significant human health impacts have been identified for some food additives. A 2022 paper in Biomedical Journal International found health impacts from food additives can include asthma, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), heart difficulties, cancer, and obesity. Some additives have been linked to health impacts in children including hormone disruption and changes to normal patterns of growth and development. Children are particularly vulnerable to food additive effects because of their small body size and the nutritional demands of development.
Scary stuff! So what can you do?
3 Ways to Protect Your Health From Food Additives
1) Fresh is best!
Whenever possible choose fresh, whole foods over processed and preserved. That is your best bet for avoiding the potential effects of food additives.
2) Read the labels
Unfortunately, food labels remain a significant challenge to protecting your good health. They are so hard to read!
Watch for chemically-sounding names as you scan labels (ex. Sodium benzoate, , nitrates, and artificial colors) . Usually the food additives occur in small amounts and therefore they are in the last few items on the ingredients list, but not always.
Artificial sweeteners which can have significant health impacts may be at the top of the list (ex. Aspartame, high-fructose corn syrup, saccharin and sucralose).
What about the phrases: “contains natural and artificial colors” and “contains natural and artificial flavors”?
Well – the words say it all – “artificial” means chemical food additives.
Bottom line:
Choose products with the shortest ingredients lists possible
Learn all the ways that sugar might appear on the label
Be aware that added color and flavor enhancers can be highly problematic for some individuals. It’s not just the preservative additives you need to watch for.
3) Get to the bottom of your own reactions
The most important thing you can do to protect your health is to learn to listen to your body.
If you eat something packaged or processed and later feel nauseous, or experience itching and swelling, etc., chances are you are reacting to something in that food and it might well be the food additive. This is easiest to see when trying something new.
But if you always eat processed foods, you may no longer be able to easily identify the source of your ill-health and discomfort. That’s is when switching to an all-natural diet and/or using an elimination diet can really come through in helping to identify the factor creating your dis-ease. Drop foods containing those additives and experience life without those annoying and damaging symptoms!
This doesn’t have to be an overnight crash dietary change either. It can be as simple as replacing out processed foods for fresher alternatives or short-list processed foods one at a time. The rejuvenation of your health is totally worth the effort!
And the best thing to do is consult your health care provider if you suspect that food additives are creating your symptoms.
Food is Supposed to Be Perishable
As human beings, we evolved eating foods fresh from our surrounding environment.
Fresh fruits and vegetables.
Fresh grains.
Fresh meat and fish and eggs and dairy.
There were no ultra-processed drinks that stay fresh on the shelf for 6 months at a time, soups in tin cans, or ready made meals. No instant potatoes, no dried sauce packets to add water to, and no fake cheese spreads.
We evolved in a world in which food is medicine for our body to function and develop. A diet dominated by ultra processed foods is like taking toxic medication on purpose. What’s the point in that?
Many food additives are entirely avoidable by shifting away from processed foods. The best way to access health and longevity is to make sure the majority of your foods are fresh, whole, minimally processed and with as few food additives/preservatives as possible.
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