6.8 Food additives

Additives may be used to:

• maintain nutritional quality
• maintain or improve keeping quality or stability, thus reducing wastage
• change food by altering taste, colour or consistency.

Many contemporary food additives were first found naturally in food. They are now added as a purer form of the naturally occurring substance, or as a synthetic additive chemically identical to the natural substance.

Every food additive has a specific purpose and comes under a ‘class’ name which describes its function.

Food additive codes

Additives are listed on food labels by their class name (e.g. colour, preservative), followed by the number of the specific additive(s) used. The codes overcome the problem of spelling out long, scientific names on labels. Where there is no current numerical code, the specific name or some other appropriate designation appears on the label. An additive that does not belong to any of the classes is identified by its specific name or code number.

Examples of how additives appear on labels

Colour (brilliant scarlet 4R)                                    or                  Colour (124)

Antioxidant (sodium ascorbate)                              or                  Antioxidant (301)

Preservative (calcium sorbate)                               or                  Preservative (203)

Vegetable gum (guar gum)                                    or                  Vegetable gum (412)

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