Nutritional supplements: we read the composition of the product and are not intimidated

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

The life hacker figured out which E in products, what they mean and whether it is worth sticking a list of prohibited additives on the refrigerator.

What are dietary supplements and why are they needed?

A food additive is any substance that we do not eat on its own and that is specially added to products in order to achieve certain properties from them.

Nutritional supplements are invented to make food better. For example, preserve it for a long time when you need to stock up on food, or enhance the taste and preserve the texture of the food.

Without additives, store shelves will be almost empty: without preservatives, food will quickly deteriorate, without stabilizers and antioxidants, many will not appear at all.

The idea of using certain substances to improve food is not new, because spices, salt, starch and vinegar are also food additives, albeit known for many centuries. But nutritional supplements are also a horror story about harmful chemicals from which we all get sick and die.

In fact, all substances that exist in nature are also chemistry, and food additives, even with the "terrible" E index, can be natural (and at the same time much more dangerous than synthetic ones).

Let's try to figure out what the codes and labels on the packages mean, and find out if it is possible to eat foods with additives.

Are they harmful or harmless?

This must be the most important question that worries everyone who is considering the next package listing thickeners, dyes and preservatives.

The answer is: food additives should not be harmful. All additives that end up in our food must comply with standards and regulations. And if the supplement has a code that starts with the letter E, then that's even better. The code means that the substance complies with the Codex Alimentarius - a document that regulates international food standards.

If the supplement has an E index, this means that the substance has been researched and tested, and the dose at which it is safe has been calculated.

Any substance can be dangerous, even pure water. The only question is quantity. The most useful vitamins in the world turn into poisons in case of an overdose.

The additives that are used in the food industry, in this sense, do not differ from all other substances. Each has an admissible daily intake (ADI). This is the dose of a substance that can be obtained without harm to health.

everyday.

To calculate this dose, animal experiments are performed. The highest level of supplement consumption is found, at which nothing will happen to the animal, and then divided by the safety factor needed to account for the differences between animals and humans. The resulting dose is recorded in milligrams (substance) per kilogram (human body weight), while the average weight of a person is considered to be 60 kg.

And already from this value, they calculate how much and what kind of additive can be put into products. This takes into account a lot of factors. For example, if research shows that people eat three times as much sausage on Sundays as they do during the week, then this will be taken into account when calculating the daily allowable dose. What does this mean for us?

You can eat food with food additives, because they have been tested for a long time.

But not everything that is allowed is useful. Supplements in the quantities that are in food do not cause obvious harm, but they may not be of any benefit either. And they can cause individual reactions, the same allergy.

In addition, research is ongoing. Lead cosmetics were once allowed, and some food additives from time to time fall into the "Harmful Than We Thought" category, like synthetic dyes or salicylic acid. And then there are national standards that differ from those recommended by the code. For example, additives banned in one country may be allowed in another, like the sweetener sodium cyclamate (E952), which was excluded from our SanPiN in 2010.

There are two more facts that raise doubts about the benefits of dietary supplements:

1. We cannot check if the manufacturer has followed all the rules and regulations in the manufacture of the product.
2. The food itself is not always healthy. If you live on instant noodles, then you will be bad. But not because of the supplements, but because of the lack of nutrients, vitamins, fiber and minerals.

What are food additives

The classification of food additives is based on their function: flavors for odor, colorants for appearance, preservatives for long-term storage. There are more than 20 such classes of additives, let's deal with the main ones.

Some additives are more harmful than others, so their content must be controlled using special methods. This is the business of the inspection authorities and Rospotrebnadzor, and we, for our part, can only decide whether there is another product that has a suspicious additive in its composition. Such additives are listed in separate frames.

Dyes

Indexes: E100 - E182.

Dyes enhance or change the color of the product. According to the norms of the Customs Union, they are not allowed to be used everywhere. Unprocessed foods, for example, should look as they are. Meat, milk, eggs, fruits and vegetables, tea and chocolate are good without dyes. Also, you can not tint food for children under 3 years old.

There are three types of dyes:

1. Natural … They are obtained from leaves, fruits, or even insects. For example, from carrots, turmeric, spinach. They also have their own E indices, that is, these are natural additives: carotenes (E160a), sugar color (E150), chlorophylls (E140), carmines (E120), paprika derivatives (E160s), anthocyanins (E163), riboflavin (E101) … Despite all their naturalness, they have norms of use.
2. Synthetic … These are organic dyes that are created by man. These dyes are used more often than natural ones, because they are more stable and bright, give more pleasant colors, and are also cheaper at the same time. But there are more questions to them: some can accumulate in the body, some have a toxic effect. They should not be in baby products, and the concentration of synthetic dyes in any other food should not exceed 0.01%.
3. Mineral … Mineral dyes. They are usually used to paint surfaces.

Dyes, the content of which is additionally controlled: azorubin (E122), quinoline yellow (E104), sunset yellow (E110), strong green FCF (E143), green S (E142), indigo carmine (E132), brown HT (E155), charming red AC (E129), ponceau 4R (E124), blue lustrous FCF (E133), blue patented V (E131), tartrazine (E102), black lustrous PN (E151), annatto (E160b), carmine (E120), curcumin (E100), lutein (E161b), lycopene (E160d).

Preservatives

Indices:E200 - E299.

Preservatives are compounds that must keep the product from spoiling. Roughly speaking, they must destroy bacteria, fungi (mold) and all those microorganisms that want to eat this product earlier than we do.

Preservatives act on living microorganisms, to some extent on us, so their use is severely limited. You cannot use preservatives in the production of milk, butter, flour, bread (if it is not prepared for long-term storage), raw meat for food production.

You can't live completely without preservatives: the harm from a spoiled product is much greater than from a carefully calibrated dose of the additive.

For example, one of the main scarecrows is nitrates and nitrites (E240 - E259), which are both preservatives and dyes. They preserve the bright color of meat products and at the same time save sausages and sausages from the development of botulinum sticks in them. If someone is not in the know, it causes a deadly disease, and an externally contaminated product is no different from a pure one.

Nitrates and nitrites are responsible for the formation of nitrosamines in the body, which are already harmful: they have a carcinogenic effect, they affect blood pressure. And in general, the constant use of red meat and nitric acid salts (nitrates and nitrites) is not very useful.

The nuance is that, in principle, the formation of nitrosamines in meat is a natural process. And in our body they are formed, and nitrites, which contribute to this, are easier to obtain from ordinary beets than from sausages.

And the preservative sulfur dioxide (E220) may not be indicated on the package at all, if it is small (less than 10 mg / kg).

You can't just take and say how much preservatives should be contained in a product, because the same substance in different foods can have different concentrations.

For example, in non-alcoholic flavored drinks - in soda or juice - benzoic acid and its salts can be in an amount of 120 mg / kg, and in ordinary beets - 2 g per kg, in eggs generally up to 5 g. These additives cause allergic reactions, but a person can react much more strongly to blueberries than to inexpensive sausages.

Hazardous preservatives: benzoic acid and its salts (E210 - E219), dehydracetic acid (E265) and its salt (E266), diphenyl (E230), nitrates and nitrites (E240 - E259), parabens (E214 - E219), sulfurous acid and its salts (E220 - E228), sorbic acid and its salts sorbates (E200 - E209).

Antioxidants

Indexes: E300 - E399.

Antioxidants with a slightly more beautiful name "antioxidants" are heavily praised by supporters of a healthy diet. They are found in green tea and fruits. This is ascorbic acid (E300), and citric (E330), and phosphoric acid (E338), thanks to which you can clean teapots with Coca-Cola and get stomach problems if you overdo it.

Antioxidants are needed to store fats and regulate the taste of foods. For example, tocopherols (E306 - E309) are already contained in some fatty acids, have useful properties and, if added to the product in combination with other antioxidants, keep the freshness of the product for a long time.

Many antioxidants are obtained from natural raw materials: guaiac gum (E314), soy, oats - or they are made with exactly the same chemical formula as ascorbic acid.

Of the synthetic antioxidants, the content of which is controlled and limited, ionol (E321), butyloxyanisole (E320), tert-butylhydroquinone (E319), propyl, octyl and dodecyl esters of gallic acid (E310 - E312), phosphates (E340 - E349) are widespread.

Stabilizers

Indexes: E400 - E499.

These are additives that should improve the consistency of the product and maintain it for a long time. As a rule, these substances have little effect on the body, because many are almost not absorbed in the gastrointestinal tract. So they are rarely found on the lists of the "most harmful in the world" supplements.

However, this does not mean that they can be eaten in unlimited quantities. They can, for example, spoil digestion because they slow down the absorption of other substances, and research into their effects on the gut is ongoing.

What concerns stabilizers:

1. Thickeners … They are needed to make gels, jellies, jellies. Either natural or semi-synthetic thickeners are allowed to be added to products. Natural ones are extracted from plants: guar gum (E412), agar (E406), gum arabic (E414), pectins (E440). The semi-synthetic ones also come from plants, but they are modified to achieve certain properties. These are methylcellulose (E461), modified starches (not genetically modified, this is a different technology), alginic acid (E400) and its salts (E401 - E405). Synthetic thickeners also exist, but they are not added to products.
2. Emulsifiers and stabilizers … They are needed so that ready-made mixtures do not disintegrate into compounds. For example, mix oil with water and an emulsifier will help seal for a long time. Thanks to stabilizers and emulsifiers, yoghurt is yoghurt, not a caked mass in a puddle of water. These substances are made on the basis of fatty acids (E470 - E489), esters.

Carriers to be controlled: propylene glycol (E490), phosphates (E450 - E459).

Acidity regulators, improvers

Indices:E500 - E599.

This group of substances is somewhat similar to the previous one. The point of regulators is to preserve the consistency of the product. For example, make sure that the flour does not cake with ammonium sulfate (E517).

Flavors and flavor enhancers

Indexes: E600 - E699.

For the most part, flavor enhancers are hidden under the indices in this range, because it is unrealistic to regulate flavors in this way. There are not just a lot of aromatic substances in the world, there are incredibly many of them. Not all aromatic substances are harmless, therefore their use is limited and regulated by separate applications, documents and lists.

In Russia, you can use several thousand substances that make up flavorings. The smells we smell are composed of several aromatic substances that act on our receptors.

Scary chemical names in fragrance designations do not mean that everything is bad. Chemists do not call strawberry smell "the smell of strawberries", if only because strawberries contain dozens of aromatic substances with creepy names such as nonalactone or benzyl acetate.

It is unrealistic to figure out what is possible and what is not possible without special education and experience, especially since manufacturers are not obliged to indicate which aromatic substances were used in the flavoring.

We can only see if it is natural or synthetic. Natural is one in which all the ingredients are obtained from natural sources. All others are synthetic.

Note that now there should be no "identical to natural" flavorings, the classification has changed.

Just in case, remember that you cannot add flavorings to mimic the smell of the product. For example, flavoring "bread" in the actual bread or "milk" in milk. But in a dairy product it is already possible. Still, you cannot flavor foods to hide the smell of spoilage.

Flavor enhancers are needed to enhance the natural taste of a product and make it more attractive. The most famous among them is monosodium glutamate (E621). There is a lot of controversy around him: either to believe that he is to blame for all the troubles from obesity to headaches, or to recognize him as absolutely harmless.

One way or another, but our laws recommend treating glutamic, guanylic and inosinic acids and at the same time their salts (E620 - E633), as well as 5'-ribonucleotides (E634 - E635) with caution.

Sweeteners, additional ingredients and defoamers

Indices:E700 - E900.

Everyone has already figured out that sugar is evil. But in the world there are natural (stevioside, amino acids) and synthetic (saccharin, xylitol, cyclamates) substances that are much sweeter than sugar, and less harm from them. Sweeteners are needed for dietary nutrition, they are recommended for people with diabetes. True, some sugary supplements have side effects. Cyclamates (E952), for example, were excluded from the list of permitted in Russia in 2010.

Remember that if the product contains isomaltite (E953), xylitol (E967), lactitol (E966), maltitol (E965), mannitol (E421), sorbitol (E420), erythritol (E968), then they can have a laxative effect.

Sweeteners to be controlled: aspartame (E951), acesulfame (E950), aspartame-acesulfame salt (E962), dihydrochalcone neohesperidin (E959), saccharin (E954), sucralose (E955), thaumatin (E957).

Additional substances

Index:E900 - E1999.

This is a huge group of substances that did not fit into the previous sections. There are additives that are needed for packaging products, and stabilizers, and everything else.

Should be controlled: diacetin (E1517), triacetin (E1518), benzyl alcohol (E1519), triethyl citrate (E1505).

How to know if a product can be eaten

Calculating what and in what quantities a manufacturer has put into a product is a thankless task. Naturally, nutritional supplements are a way to make food cheaper, or turn something conventionally edible into something appetizing. The same sausage without meat can be harmless. And absolutely useless.

Therefore, the principle “The less additives in the product, the better” works.

But even high-quality and healthy products are not complete without additives, even if there are only two of them, not 20.

According to the norms, each additive on the package must be described in detail: why it is needed (its function), index (if any) or name. In theory, an honest manufacturer will not write "flavoring". It is necessary to indicate what kind of flavor it is, what it consists of or what it is called. And complex additives must be deciphered.

Should I write down separately which additives are prohibited and check each box against this list? Not worth it. Even if one of the manufacturers decides to somehow get and use a prohibited product, it is unlikely that he in his right mind will indicate this on the package. If in doubt, it is better to check the package by checking the packaging with SanPiN or the regulations of the Customs Union.

By 2020, the EFSA must re-evaluate all food additives that were allowed in the EU before January 20, 2009. This means that we may still have a lot of news about what we eat.