. Food Additives

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) maintains a data--L base called "Everything" Added to Food in the United States (EAFUS). This database contains the names of more than 3,000 substances that are, have been, or may be legally added to foods in the United States. A number of the items listed in the EAFUS are compounds, elements, and mixtures familiar to students in a beginning chem­istry class, such as...

Preservation

Foods spoil due to two primary causes: the action of microorganisms living in the food and the natural decay processes that take place in food itself. In each of these cases, chemical changes that take place in the food are responsible for spoilage. Microorganisms such as bacteria, yeasts, and mold occur natural­ly in all foods. They grow and reproduce using the nutrients found in food to carry out their own metabolism....

PRESERVATION FROM MICROORGANISMS

As noted in chapter 1, one set of techniques for the preservation of food is designed to kill microorganisms, to reduce or stop their growth, or to prevent them from reproducing. The methods used are generally either physical or chemical. Physical methods of food preservation are designed to alter the environment in which microorganisms live, making it difficult or impossible for them to survive. Most microorganisms have...

Nicolas (francois) appert (ca. 1750-1841)

It is easy for people living in the 21st century to take food preservation for granted. Almost anywhere in the world, a person can walk into some kind of store and purchase foods that have been preserved by canning, bot­tling, freezing, drying, or some other method. In the early 1800s, however, most of the techniques that are widely available today had not yet been invented. The first such technique to have been developed...

Preservation From Natural Decay

Another form of spoilage occurs when food begins to break down by natural processes of decay. This process takes place when enzymes naturally present in foods interact with (usually) oxygen and/or water, breaking down the food's carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and other biochemical compounds into their component parts. This type of spoilage has a number of manifestations. One such change is rancidity. When a fat or oil...

Nutritional Enhancement

Arguably the most significant change that has taken place in the health of Americans over the last century is the dramatic decrease in the occurrence of nutritional disorders. These disorders result from insufficient intake of one or more dietary nutrients. They in­clude the major vitamin-deficiency diseases of pellagra (insufficient amounts of niacin in the diet), scurvy (lack of vitamin C), rickets (lack of vitamin D),...

Walter Norman Haworth (1883-1950)

People sometimes worry about the addition of "chemicals" to our foods by food corporations. Yet one class of food additives, the vitamins and minerals, have probably done more to improve the general health of Americans than any other product used by the food industry. This step only became possible, however, when chemists in the early 20th century began to analyze naturally occurring vitamins and determine their...

Enhancement of Marketability

Eating is not an automatic, boring routine that people go through in order to stay alive. Indeed, for most people, meals are pleasurable experiences in which diners savor the color, flavor, odor, texture, and other properties of the foods they eat. Corporations that prepare foods for sale have always been aware of this fact, and they have developed hundreds of food additives that enhance the attractiveness of food to...

Regulation of Food Additives

As described in chapter 1, food additives are regulated in the United States on the basis of a series of laws described in chapter 1 includ­ing the Pure Food Law of 1906, the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938, the 1958 Food Additives Amendment, the 1960 Color Additive Amendment, and the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996. This framework of laws divides food additives into four major cat­egories: generally...

Safety of Food Additives

The FDA and comparable agencies in other countries have made significant efforts to make sure that chemicals added to foods will not cause health problems for humans who consume those foods. Consumers can be almost certain that the additives used to preserve foods, give it color and flavor, and impart other desirable properties will not kill people, cause cancer, affect the health of their children, or result in other health...