Friday, September 9, 2016

Now you speak: What do people know about food additives?


As we announced in the previous post, this new entry will be much more practical and interactive. This time it is going to be you who tell us what do you know about food additives. We have taken to the streets to conduct a survey to people of all ages in relation to these compounds and their use. We are going to analyze the answers and draw conclusions about them. Moreover, we are also going to teach you how to analyze food additives that food contains and how to find them using real examples of nutrition labels. Finally we are going to talk about an app in which entering the E number or the full name of a particular additive gives us back instantly a descriptive sheet of it, including what kind of compound is, its origin and whether their use has reported any adverse effects ever, among others.

Do not miss it!

 


What do people know about food additives?

One of the things we advocate is that you should have enough information on a given topic before making off alarms or fall into unfounded cliches. Therefore, we wanted to find out what do people know about food additives. Folder in hand, we went to confluence key points such as the General Hospital and the University of Alicante, and the Joan XXIII Hospital and the Rovira i Virgili University of Tarragona in order to survey people. We were able to get the answers of 42 individuals whose age range varies between 17 and 73 years old. All questions and responses are summarized in the following table (click to zoom).



Let’s firstly analyze the answers to all questions without age distinction. A third of respondents consumed prepared or precooked foods regularly, which often contain a lot of food additives, particularly preservatives. This finding is not surprising since, as we said earlier, our fast lifestyle and the increasing supply by markets make buying these foods an easy, quick and convenient solution. The classification of the answers to this question by age did not reveal that young people consume a greater amount of such food, contrary to what often seems.

Surprises the fact that almost 75% of respondents do not possess any training, information or basic patterns of nutrition, neither about food additives. This time the classification by age resulted revealing. Ages were divided into three groups: under 25, between 25-45 and older than 45 years. As shown in the graph below, the lack of information increases as does the age of participants.






This increase may seem nothing spectacular, but it could indicate us that young people are more informed than older people. This may be due to an increasing awareness by teachers especially at colleges and universities, nutrition and "healthy lifestyle" marathons, and the pursuit of both healthy and toned body that somehow requires information about this matter, mainly on nutritional guidelines and the search for organic or "green" products. But the fact is that this slight increase in the information young people have should be no relief because 65% of people under 25 and 70% of people between 25 and 45 years old do not have any knowledge on what the issue is concerned.

Following the order of the questions asked, only 36% of consumers read informative labels in search of additives in their products. But even so, 95% have the impression that there is an excessive use of these compounds nowadays. One of the answers we received most to this question was "yes, currently all contain something" referring to food additives. That is, people know that many of the products they consume contain additives, whatever the type, but the majority of them do not stop to examine them, due in part to lack of interest generated by ignorance. For instance, if a person does not know how to interpret the E numbers, Why would they read labels? They just will know that their products contain additives but nothing about which or why. A few paragraphs below we are going yo teach you how to solve this problem and we hope that it will help you to form an own opinion on the use of these compounds based on objective data.

Speaking of E numbers, more than half of respondents (55%) did not know what they are. The question was not addressed to know exactly each one of the E numbers, of course, but to see if they identified them as food additives. Once we explained them that, in Europe, the EFSA is responsible for giving a number to each of them, in theory to facilitate their nomenclature and classification, we made them the next question. That question was done to assess the confidence that consumers have in the competent food authority, the EFSA in our case, and the level of suggestion that the data that accompanied it created. The question was: "If I told you that, for example, E211 is sodium benzoate or that E252 is potassium nitrate, two compounds which isolated are highly toxic, but whose use as preservatives is very common and is approved by the competent authorities would you continue buying foods containing them?". When we say isolated we mean the pure compounds, lab quality for example, whose packaging is labeled as toxic compounds. This was explained at all times during the survey. About 62% of participants said that they would not return to consume foods containing them, while the remaining 38% said that if they are regulated and approved there should be no danger in relation to its consumption. If these people knew that, for instance, caffeine they take daily in the coffee in an isolated way has an extremely high potential toxicity and its packaging contain the famous "yellow label with a skull", they would stop to think before passing final judgment. In addition, in the following question 79% of the respondant said they believe that if instead of putting the E number in food labels would put the full chemical name of additives people would consume fewer products that contain them. 





This is what we meant with the dual use of E numbers in the previous post. Then we have to talk about "chemophobia", defined as an irrational dislike or prejudice against all or certain chemicals. This fear may be due to misconceptions about the potential harm of certain compounds or mainly to the lack of understanding that everything, including ourselves, is made up of chemicals and a chemical name or another should not cause us any reaction of rejection a priori. In most cases this lies in ignorance and, as we said, the use of E numbers is a marketing strategy used in some cases to hide the chemical origin of some compounds that may provoke such reaction by consumers, because additives are not always labeled with these numbers. A widespread example is the aversion to acids, but the reality is that these compounds surround us: ascorbic acid, for instance, is vitamin C and an antioxidant widely used, acetic acid is the essential component of vinegar and even citric acid is the characteristic component of lemon juice. We call to rationality and calm, we must be realistic and have a 360-degree view before planting us in an fixed opinion.

Concluding the survey, 98% of respondents argued that some training in nutrition or specifically in food additives at early age is necessary, especially during school and high school. It is understood that a proper nutrition training should include a section on additives, not focusing exclusively on the latter. Overall, we advocate a partial training in schools, lectures or seminars for instance, and the implementation of a nutrition subject in high school. At short ages, preschool and school, it is essential that parents carry this responsibility. It is fundamental that people know how to eat in a balanced way, what are they eating and what effects these foods have into their body at all times and, of course, in their children. Nutrition is a fundamental and essential part in our lives and can not be ignored. Currently there are not an exclusive subject of nutrition implanted in any school. It is true that some other subjects talk about the issue in greater or lesser depth, but we think that is not enough. Furthermore we claim the self-study, the searching of information, the Reading and the interest in the topic to even enjoy it. With all these indications we will find a healthy future for all of us in which ignorance would be a choice and not an alternative.





How can we analyze food additives in our food?

In this section we will teach you where to check the E numbers or the full names of the additives listed on food labels. So, what better example than a real label to do it: we have chosen a random tag corresponding to a package of cooked ham. As we can see, E-407 and E-451i appear as stabilizers, sodium ascorbate as an antioxidant and E-621 as a flavour enhancer.



To identify these compounds we can easily see the list of E numbers approved in Europe and sorted by category that the European Council Food Information or EUFIC provides, available in PDF format. You can find it in DOCS section of the blog. This will get you the full name of each compound from the E number or vice versa, but we can not go further. If we want additional information we must use other resources. For this reason we want to present you a more dynamic option that integrates both features: tells us the name or E number and also provides us detailed information of a certain compound, including description, origin, use, side effects and hazard/toxicity. We are talking about the www.aditivos-alimentarios.com website (only available in spanish) and it is true that it is very useful but we have to be careful regarding "side effects" and "hazard/toxicity" paragraphs because, as we have taught you, not everything is what it seems and you have to have more information before passing judgment. We also recall that this website does not belong to any official agency, we have just mentioned that, except those paragraphs, it provides an understandable, useful and easy information. Following either of the two above resources, we can find that E-451i is pentasodium triphosphate, E-407 is carrageenan and E-621 is the famous monosodium glutamate or MSG. Sodium ascorbate is E301 but this time appears the complete name of the compound. For detailed information see this page. We will not go on to describe the detailed information the website provide but this could be a simple and interesting routine practice to know what are we eating and why. In the next picture you can see a screenshot of the page.





We can also consult our additives from the smartphone, expediting the searching and taking it anywhere, supermarket for instance. For this purpose we have available several applications or app. Some of them are Eat Informed-Food Additives, E-inspect Food Additives, E-codes Free-Food Additives or What Additives. But we will focus on the app called Food Additives Checker, available for iPhone, Android or Windows phones and in several languages. It is very intuitive, fast, easy to use and does not require internet connection to use. This application contains a list of more than 500 food additives currently used and gives us the full name, E number, origin, use, function and security level ranked by colours and numbered from 1 to 5. This level of security is based on reported adverse effects and, again, it is not an official information from a food entity. An application like this can help us a lot when we are making the purchase and also allows us to know what additives we must avoid if we are following a certain diet, such as vegetarian, vegan or Muslim. It also shows us the compounds that can cause allergy or asthma in certain situations and in susceptible people, as well as those whose consumption is not suitable for children and why. Here you can see some screenshots of the app.


 



We hope we have fulfilled our purpose of making this post about food additives more practical and interactive. We want to know the opinion of people and demonstrate that at present it is not difficult to be informed about a given topic, thanks to the many information sources and resources that we can use, even more if the subject matter is related to our health and wellbeing. We want to have aroused your curiosity and critical thinking, and above all, that you have enjoyed reading this post as much as we did writing it.

For any questions or suggestions do not hesitate to contact us.


CONSULTED WEBSITES
  1. www.efsa.europa.eu
  2. www.fda.gov
  3. www.eufic.org
  4. www.aditivos-alimentarios.com

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