The Main Functions Of Food Additives

Food additives have greatly promoted the development of the food industry and are known as the soul of the modern food industry. This is mainly because it brings many benefits to the food industry.
The main functions of food additives are roughly as follows:
● Prevent deterioration
For example: preservatives can prevent food spoilage caused by microorganisms, extend the shelf life of food, and also prevent food poisoning caused by microbial contamination.
Another example: Antioxidants can prevent or delay the oxidative deterioration of food to provide food stability and storage durability, and can also prevent the formation of potentially harmful auto-oxidative substances in oils.
In addition, it can also be used to prevent enzymatic and non-enzymatic browning of food, especially fruits and vegetables. These are of certain significance to the preservation of food.
● Improve senses
Improve food sensory properties: Appropriate use of colorants, color protectants, bleaches, flavorings, emulsifiers, thickeners and other food additives can significantly improve the sensory quality of food and meet people's different needs.
● Stay nutritious
Maintain and improve nutritional value: Appropriately adding certain food nutrition fortifiers that belong to the natural nutritional range during food processing can greatly improve the nutritional value of food, which is beneficial to preventing malnutrition and nutritional deficiencies, promoting nutritional balance, and improving people's health. Significance.
● Convenient supply
Increase variety and convenience: There are more than 20,000 kinds of food on the market for consumers to choose from. Although most of these foods are produced through certain packaging and different processing methods, in the production process, some colors, aromas, Most of the products with good taste have added coloring, flavoring, seasoning and even other food additives to varying degrees. It is these numerous foods, especially the supply of convenience foods, that bring great convenience to people's lives and work.
● Easy to process
Convenient food processing: The use of defoaming agents, filter aids, stabilizing and coagulants, etc. in food processing can be beneficial to food processing operations. For example, when glucono delta lactone is used as a tofu coagulant, it can be beneficial to the mechanization and automation of tofu production.
● Other functions
Special needs: Food should meet people's different needs as much as possible. For example, if people with diabetes cannot eat sugar, they can use non-nutritive sweeteners or low-calorie sweeteners, such as sucralose or aspartame to make sugar-free food supplies.
There are also companies that set their own standards for additives. Some leading companies in the industry have formulated preservatives, cyclamates, pigments, and flavors that are not allowed to be added.