The Advantages and Disadvantages of Food Additive Use - Essay Example

?The advantages and disadvantages of food additive use. Food additives Additive has been defined in EU Regulation 1333/2008 as “any substance not normally consumed as food in itself and not normally used as a characteristic of food, whether or not it has nutritive value, the intentional addition of which to a food for a technological purpose in the manufacture, processing, preparation, treatment, packaging, transport, or storage of such food results, or may reasonably expected to result, in it or its by-products becoming directly or indirectly a component of such food” (RoyalSocietyOfChemistry, 2013, p. 2) Food Colours Colours are added to foods to enhance their visual properties Colouring foods is considered as a deceptive practice to mislead the consumers mainly children. Colours are permitted under strict control of justification by the producer who should make out a case that he adds the colour only to replace what has been lost in processing like canning or heat treatment, to get consistency of colour and for the sake of visual appeal. In U.K. it is a part of noble tradition .to add colour to food right from the medieval time when cooks had been so fond of using colours to food. Consumer expectation is the main reason to use colours (RoyalSocietyOfChemistry, 2013, p. 6). Canthaxanthin This is used as a drug, food or cosmetic colorant and has been reported to cause what is called Canthaxanthin retinopathy characterized by formation of crystals in the macula lutea membranes of the retina. The crystal deposition causes damage to blood vessels around the eye. Interaction of Canthaxanthin with lipid membranes and the aggregation of this pigment are found to be the factors responsible for increased toxicity of Canthaxanthin (Sujak, 2009). It also causes aplastic anemia (Sujak, 2012) Canthaxanthin is a synthetic carotenoid. Marketed in the form of tablet, Canthaxanthin is used for skin tanning. As a food colorant, it is added to animal feed for enhancing the colour of egg yolks, skin of chicken, and flesh of rainbow trout. The additive will stay in the body for months after tablets are consumed thus causing retinopathy along with hepatitis, itching and urticaria (Herbert, 1991). Average daily intake ADI for Canthaxanthin could not be fixed due to irreversibility or very slow reversibility of the retinal crystal deposition (IPCS, n.d. ) Sweeteners Sweeteners are obviously for adding taste to food and come in two types of bulk and intense. They are permitted in food either as energy reduced or without sugar. They are presented to consumer as table-top sweeteners for the use of dieters and diabetics. Sweeteners such as aspartame, saccharin, acesulfame K, sucralose and steviol glycosides possess a very high sweetening property greater by several times of sucrose. Aspartame is 200 times, saccharin 300-500 times sweeter than sucrose. Bulk sweeteners are sorbitol, isomalt are less sweet but give volume and mouthfeel and for dietary products meant for diabetics. The removal of sucrose content also lessens the carcinogenicity of the product (RoyalSocietyOfChemistry, 2013, p. 7). Saccharin Used as a sweetener in food as well as drug formulations, it is certainly not worse than sugar as opined by international scientists (Guillem-Liobat, 2012). Saccharin as a nonnutritive sweetener is classified as food additive and regulated as such. These nonnutritive sweeteners are several hundred to several thousand times sweeter than sucrose. Following a rigorous approval process, saccharin has been allowed to be used as a safe sweetener. As a nonnutritive source, it is especially helpful for people with diabetes. Aspartame is also a nonnutritive sweetener (Shwide-Slavin, Swift, & Ross, 2012).. These sweeteners enjoy the status of Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS) which is defined as “ any substance that is intentionally added to food …and generally recognized, among qualified experts, as having been adequately shown to be safe under the conditions of its intended use” (Shwide-Slavin, Swift, & Ross, 2012, p. 104). However ,controversy is still hovering around saccharin as a cancer causing agent as it was found to be carcinogenic in animals. Though there was a ban on this to be as used as a sweetener, it was later withdrawn in 1991 by the U.S. but with a condition to add in the label of the sweetener packs as “saccharin is a potential cancer causing agent”. A case study of 1994 for hepatotoxicity suggested that saccharin could cause liver damage. In this study, a patient was found to have elevated serum concentrations of liver enzymes following oral intake of three different drugs all of which contained saccharin (Whitehouse, Boullata, & McCauley, 2008). Cyclamate with saccharin This artificial sweetener (Cyclamate ) has been banned as it was found to be carcinogenic in several experimental studies on rats (Whitehouse, Boullata, & McCauley, 2008). A 10: 1 dose of cyclamate and saccharin was administered in rats which had received earlier these sweeteners individually with no adverse effects, for a two year period. Results showed that they could develop papillary carcinoma in 12 out of 72 rats. This finding resulted in the removal of cyclamates from the GRAS list of nonnutritive sweeteners (Oser, Carson, Cox, Vogins, & Sternberg, 1975) Aspartame It was accidentally found by a scientist Searle in 1965 while studying on new anti ulcer drugs. It was while he was trying to synthesize a tetra peptide, there was an intermediate process to make aspartyl-phenylalanine methyl ester. The latter compound was accidentally tasted by him and found to be sweet. It was first approved in 1981 for use in all foods and drinks as sweetener. It has since been used in more than 6,000 products and consumed by hundreds of millions of people worldwide and is 200 times sweeter than sucrose. This is however subject to controversy as it contains phenylalanine which should not be taken by individuals with a rare genetic disorder known as phenylketonuria. The package containing this sweetener must carry this warning. Phenylalanine is an aminoacid used as a building block for proteins. Those who suffer from phenylketonuria lack the enzyme phenylalanine hydroxylase that is required to breakdown phenylalanine. Thus, phenylalanine accumulates without being broken down in such individuals in whom phenylalanine build up can cause altered brain function. The aspartame is also subject to controversy because of its potential toxicity. New studies of 2007 by Soffritti et al have demonstrated with evidence that it is a carcinogenic compound. It also causes migraine in people chewing a gum containing aspartame. Migraine ceased once people stopped chewing the gum containing aspartame. Migraine reappeared in them on resuming chewing. It can also lead to decline in platelet count with enlarged liver, spleen and marked histiocytes in bone marrow as observed in a 10 year old girl. When this additive was removed in her diet, normalization followed (Whitehouse, Boullata, & McCauley, 2008). Conclusion Two tables shown below are self-explanatory. In spite of the known toxicities, the above mentioned sweeteners continue to be used as food additives probably because they have been found toxic only in animal experiments and only in isolated cases, individuals have been found with disorders other than carcinoma. There have been no reported cases of carcinoma in humans caused by the said sweeteners. As for, the colorant Canthaxanthin there is no clear evidence that it is still being used as skin tanning agent. References Guillem-Liobat, X. (2012). Defining, regulating and using saccharin at the outset of the industrial food era (1888–1914). Appetite , 59 (3), 905-911. Herbert, V. (1991). Canthaxanthin Toxicity . Am J Clin Nutr , 571. IPCS. (n.d. ). Canthaxanthin . WHO Food Additive Series 26 , www.inchem.org/documents/jecfa/jecmono/v26je06.htm. Oser, L. B., Carson, S., Cox, G. E., Vogins, E. E., & Sternberg, S. S. (1975). Chronic toxicity study of cyclamate: Saccharin (10 : 1) in rats. Toxicology , 4 (3), 385-386. RoyalSocietyOfChemistry. (2013). Essential Guide to Food Additives (4 ed.). Cambridge: RSC Publishing. Shwide-Slavin, C., Swift, C., & Ross, T. (2012). Nonnutritive Sweeteners: where are we today? Diabetes Spectrum , 25 (2), 104-110. Sujak, A. (2012). Exceptional molecular organization of canthaxanthin in lipid membranes. 59 (1), 31-33. Sujak, A. (2009). Interactions between canthaxanthin and lipid membranes - possible mechanisms of canthaxanthin toxicity. Cellular and Molecular Biology Letters , 14, 395-410. Whitehouse, R. C., Boullata, J., & McCauley, L. A. (2008). The Potential Toxicity of Artificial Sweeteners. AAOHN Journal , 56 (6), 251-261. Tables (Whitehouse, Boullata, & McCauley, 2008). (Whitehouse, Boullata, & McCauley, 2008) Read More