Introduction

Few topics interest so many different people in so many different ways as does the subject of food. Of course, people need to eat to stay alive, grow and develop, and maintain good health. This need presents ongoing challenges for humans: finding ways of growing crops and raising animals in the most efficient way in the conditions available, inventing methods for competing successfully against plant and animals that also consume the crops and animals on which humans depend, developing methods for preserving foods to make sure they will be available at all times of the year, and so on.

It should be no surprise, then, to discover that a number of chemi­cal techniques used to grow and process foods today have their roots in human cultures of many centuries ago. We tend to think of spices as substances used primarily to enhance the flavor of foods. While they do enhance flavor, many spices were first used as food additives because of their ability to reduce spoilage; their primary purpose was to preserve food. Drying, salting, and smoking are other meth­ods of food preservation still widely used that have origins extend­ing to the earliest years of human existence.

Once a person's basic need for food for survival has been met, foods serve a number of other functions. Meals are often the central event in the life of a family, a neighborhood, or a community, occa­sions when people can come together to share essential elements in their lives. Those events range from the religious, such as the seder served by Jews during the Passover, to the more secular, such as the Thanksgiving dinner shared in many American homes. The host of cookbooks on every imaginable type of cuisine and food preparation

now available attests to the fact that foods are more than simply a means of survival today. They have become as important a part of our culture, at least to some people, as sports, politics, or work.

Food preparation in the 21st century is, of course, more than sim­ply an extension of the methods developed by primitive peoples cen­turies ago. Indeed, it has become a complex scientific industry that owes as much to the development of modern chemistry as it does to folk traditions and customs. The food industry had its origins in the late 1800s, when chemists began to make discoveries concerning the way in which crops were grown, animals bred and raised, and food processed for human consumption. Chemicals were discovered that added color, flavor, or texture to foods; that retarded decay; that improved the nutritional value of foods; and, in some cases, actually replaced certain natural foods.

Over the past two centuries, chemists have continued to push forward the frontiers of food design and development. Today, virtu­ally every technique that is available to the industrial or research chemist is employed by the food chemist to modify the composition of natural foods or even to create new foods with no counterpart in the real world. One of the great challenges for consumers in the 21st century is to learn more about and decide how to use the host of synthetic and semisynthetic foods now available to them.

The involvement of chemists in food modification practices is a double-edged sword. For all the improvements it may have produced in the diet available to humans, the chemical modification of foods has raised many questions about safety and benefits. Are processed foods really equivalent or preferable to natural foods? Are the pro­cesses by which food is modified relatively safe, or do they carry significant risks for the consumer? Are there limits to the ways in which food can and should be modified? Questions such as these have become part of the daily dialogue of concerned consumers. They are the focus of this book.