Food additives from an organic chemistry perspective

Abstract

Food additives are an essential part of the contemporary food system, providing definite advantages in terms of people’s way of life. Food additives have been used, investigated, regulated, and controlled all through history. Although many reports, books, monographs, articles, etc. are available on this topic, but only a few of them focus on catering primarily to an organic chemistry audience who has little or no prior exposure to systematic food additive chemistry. This report gives a brief historical and regulatory background followed by an overview of different types of food additives along with their properties and structures. The paper is roughly subdivided into the following categories: (a) introduction to food additives, (b) their brief historical background, (c) short introduction to the numbering and the approval process for additives, (d) a discussion of the categories of food additives from an organic chemists’ perspective which forms the main bulk of the paper including, for example, categories such as acids, acidity regulators, antifoaming and anticaking agents, emulsifiers, flavors, etc., (e) comparison of organic vs synthetic foods and food safety issues, and (f) conclusion and future prospects.