Is it true that food additives are dangerous to health?

It is common that the food additives, which are indicated in the composition of products under the E-XXX code, are extremely harmful to humans and cause many diseases-up to cancer. We decided to check if this is really so.

IN Internet Can find diverse Options lists Dangerous food additives. These lists Recommend print, carry with you and to check With them when choosing products in a supermarket. Also many sites about a healthy lifestyle and correct Putings talk about the most harmful e-shkas. According to survey Vesti.ru, 65% of Russians are dissatisfied with the fact that the products have food supplements.

Codification of additives with the help of alphanumeric index appeared in Europe in the 1960s. Then the Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN, together with the WHO, decided to develop a clear and unified system for the designation of all kinds of food additives. This document It was called the "Code of Alimony", changes and additions are regularly made to it. Each food supplement in it has a letter-cyphpical code, the letter is used only one-e (someone interprets her like Europe, other - Like Essbar / Edible, what is translated from it. / English. means "edible"). The first digit in the code indicates the type of substance:

1 - dyes;

2 - preservatives;

3 - antioxidants and stabilizers;

4 - emulsifiers and stabilizers;

5 - additives against tearing and coming;

6 - flavor and smell amplifiers;

7 and 8 - are not used (except for antibiotics 710–713);

9 - glazing people, softeners and other baking improvers, as well as other additives.

Speaking of food additives, it is worth noting that they are very detailed. For each substance, short -term and long -term consequences of consumption, acute toxicity, as well as potential harmful effects of additives or its decay products in various concentrations are analyzed. All these additives have been tested more than once on animals, and when they have already been approved, scientists continued to observe the health of those people who actively consume them.

Speaking of experiments on animals, you need to deal with such the termLike a half-flying dose, or LD-50. This concept is called such an amount of substance that will kill exactly half of the experimental animals. To determine the half -flying dose, animals give huge amounts of the subject. For example, in society, the E-536 additive is concerned-ferrocyanide, which is primarily used so that the salt does not lay down. Approvedthat this substance is extremely toxic and leads to severe poisoning, impaired functioning of the lymph, nervous and gastrointestinal system, as well as the liver and gall bladder. In fact, a half -flying dose for oral reception for rats is 6400 mg/kg. According to the calculations of British scientists, the average weight of a person is 62 kg, which means that LD-50 for such a person will be 396.8 g. The maximum allowed content E-536 in salt-20 mg/kg, which means that to obtain 396.8 g of ferrocyanide you will have to eat 198 kg of salt. Moreover, death will come Where earlier, because the lethal dose of salt itself for humans is 250 g. Thus, food additives are contained in food in such small amounts that their dose is not even close to lethal or dangerous.

Secondly, a significant part of the substances encoded in the e-rents, we get from products in whose composition they are not indicated at all. For example, no one sticks labels with such a composition on fruits and vegetables. At the same time, the E-300 Contained In many of them, it is better known to us as ascorbic acid or vitamin C. Accordingly, the inscription on the package “contains vitamin C” will rather attract customers, but the E-300 additive can be pushed away. E-500Which lists of harmful additives are also advised to avoid - nothing more than soda. A similar story with preservatives. From ancient times, people tried to save products suitable for consumption as long as possible. To do this, they used salt and various acids. Today's preservatives are often substances encountered in nature. For example, if you do not know that all of the above is contained in ordinary lingonberry juice, then such a list of chemicals and food additives could have scared someone.

Finally, the third argument in the protection of food additives is just logic. Firstly, international organizations monitoring the quality of products would not approve of harmful substance. Why should they deliberately poison you? Secondly, it would be extremely imprudent for the manufacturer to add a well-known toxic substance to his products, because in this case he would face constant claims and courts. Indeed, some of these additives can call People have allergies, such as the dye E102 - Tartrazin. At the same time, no one requires prohibiting natural allergens - milk, eggs, fish and seafood. 

The joint expert committee of WHO and the UN called JECFA carefully monitors all research on additives. Moreover, additives are prohibited not when evidence of their harm, but also at the level of suspicion. So under the ban I got it E-123 additive-amaranth. Some experiments on animals that used large doses of this substance demonstrated its toxicity and carcinogenicity. And although in further studies the unambiguous harm of Amaranta was not proven, the dye Forbidden Both in Russia and in the world.

At the same time, it cannot be said that all nutritional supplements are useful on their own. For example, E-250 (sodium nitrite) is a rather toxic substance, which nevertheless Found In the vast majority of meat products. And although sodium nitrite is not useful for the human body, the expert committee does not prohibit it, since it does not allow much more dangerous bacteria that release highly toxic botulinum toleoxin in meat products. 

Moreover, food containing a lot of nutritional additives is often not very useful in itself. So, many additives contain:

- sausages and processed meat, such as sausages (by data WHO, the use of 50 g of such meat per day increases the risk of colon cancer by 18%);

- fast food (in itself use fast food, as the Australian scientists found out, increases the risk of female infertility);

- soda (by the way, for health almost equally Inappropriate Both sweet soda, and soda using sweeteners).

Thus, the harm of food additives is greatly exaggerated. We consume a significant part of these substances from other “natural” products, without even suspecting it. Moreover, usually the dose of the food supplement is extremely small and the substance in such quantities cannot harm. Other nutritional supplements are really not useful, but protect our food from the propagation of dangerous bacteria in it. In addition, you need to understand that usually a lot of nutritional additives is present in the initially unimportant food.

Image on the cover: EFSA

Most of the untruth

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. Is it true that vitamin C helps to cure colds?
2. Is it true that sodium glutamate is harmful to health?
3. Is it true that sea or Himalayan salt is more useful than cook?