"Our products are pure natural green products without additives!" Whenever such food advertisements appear, we can always find that such products with the "no additives" gimmick can win more consumers' favor. So that the price of such products is higher than that of other similar products.
People tend to think that products without additives are healthier. The exposure of some illegal additives also makes the term "food additives" almost become the god of plague in people's hearts, and they are afraid to avoid it.
When buying food, you can often see the names of various "additives" on the food packaging. So, if we add additives to delicious food, is it gilding the lily?
Food additive: indispensable in daily life
According to China's Health Law (1995), food additives refer to Synthetic or natural substances added to food to improve the quality of food such as color, fragrance and taste, and to meet the needs of antisepsis and processing technology 。
They include acidity regulator, anti caking agent, defoamer, antioxidant, bleach, bulking agent, colorant, color fixative, enzyme preparation, flavor enhancer, nutrition enhancer, preservative, sweetener, thickener, spice, etc.
These additives widely exist in our lives, such as:
If your hair is afraid of getting sour, add some soda ash, which is a kind of "acidity regulator";
In order to prevent too much ice residue in ice cream, "microcrystalline cellulose", or "anti caking agent", is added;
The highly praised "carotene" in carrots is an antioxidant;
In order to make steamed bread loose and porous, we often add baking soda, which is called "leavening agent";
Chlorophyll, which makes plants green, is a widely used "colorant" and so on.
Take the preservative that many people talk about as an example. Imagine that the food that might have gone bad in a day or two could be preserved for several months because of the addition of the preservative, which inhibits the growth of bacteria. This not only reduces the cost of businesses, but also brings a lot of convenience to our consumers.
It can kill bacteria. Is it not harmful to human body?
However, many people have the mentality of avoiding preservatives. The main reason for their deep aversion to preservatives is that since they can kill bacteria, won't they be harmful to human body?
However, regardless of the dose, it is all groundless to worry about toxicity!!!
What is the purpose of adding layers of salt to the process of making sufu at home? It is to inhibit the proliferation of harmful bacteria!
From this point of view, the role of salt here is preservative. Then why are few people taking this as an argument to attack the harm of salt? It can kill bacteria. Isn't it poisonous!
Yes, salt is toxic.
The common salt, known as sodium chloride, has a median lethal dose of 3 g/kg. The so-called median lethal dose is the dose of poison required to kill half of the number of specific experimental animals of a certain weight or age through a specified infection route within a specified time.
But when we eat salt every day, at most some people say that "too much salt may lead to high blood pressure", and no one has ever resisted salt, because the amount of salt we eat is basically less than the amount it can harm the human body, and within this amount, it is beneficial to the human body.
In daily life, there is also a common example: the effective component of vinegar we often use is acetic acid, and the oral acute toxic dose of acetic acid in rats is 3.53 g/kg, that is to say, vinegar is also toxic if we eat too much~
This is true of other types of food additives. Within the statutory scope, it can obviously improve the appearance and taste of food and even enhance its nutritional components. Therefore, food additive is a beneficial invention, which makes the food industry flourish, brings us one kind of delicious food after another, and brings good news to people who eat.
These "terrible" food additives
With the development of the times, more and more substances have joined the ranks of food additives. Some are terrible when they hear their names, and some are rumored by many people that toxic and harmful substances are actually legal additives. Let's have a look~
① Sulfur dioxide
When it comes to sulfur dioxide, what can we think of? The smell of smoke in firecrackers? Or is it carcinogenic? Or the beautiful blue purple flame of sulfur burning in oxygen in junior high school chemistry class?
The above items can all be labels of sulfur dioxide. But it is really a legal food additive, or the principle of many bleaching agents is that it can produce sulfur dioxide.
Open a bottle of red wine and look at its ingredients list. It is generally found that the words "sulfur dioxide" are printed boldly on it. Sulfur dioxide can bleach, it can also prevent corrosion, inhibit the activity of oxidase in fruits and vegetables, and extend the shelf life of food.
Similarly, the toxicity of sulfur dioxide cannot escape. However, in general, it dissolves in water and reacts with alkaline substances (such as sodium bicarbonate) to produce sulfite, which can be oxidized into sulfate under the action of human body and finally discharged through urine.
Moreover, sulfate ion in sulfate is also a necessary component for human body, so its toxicity is very low in a certain dose range.
Therefore, sulfur dioxide is not as terrible as the rumors. To a certain extent, it is still our good friend! It used to bleach many of Grandpa's straw hats.
② Potassium ferrocyanide
Did you get scared by the word "cyanide" in the name? There are many rumors on the Internet, all of which are saying that many leaders do not eat salt containing potassium ferrocyanide because it is toxic.
In fact, these are the so-called "bogus words". It is not wrong that potassium cyanide is highly toxic. Its toxicity is really very, very strong, and it can kill only a small amount. However, it should be noted that this potassium cyanide has Ferrous Packaged.
The main mechanism of cyanide poisoning is that after being absorbed by the digestive tract, the cyanide can combine with the ferric ion in the cytochrome oxidase in the cell, making this enzyme inactive, thus making the tissue cells lose the ability to use oxygen, causing suffocation and death. In other words, the main toxicity of potassium cyanide is from cyanide ion.
When the cyanide below the toxic dose is ingested, the cyanide group is added into thiocyanate ion by thiocyanase in the human body, and its toxicity is about 1/200 of the cyanide group, which is then discharged with urine.
However, the cyanide ion in potassium ferrocyanide has been complexed with ferrous ion, which is firmly bound and can not be free, and naturally can not produce toxicity to human body. The oral LD50 of potassium ferrocyanide packed with ferrous ions in rats is 1.6~3.2 g/kg, which is basically similar to the toxicity of salt itself.
Not only China allows potassium ferrocyanide to be added to table salt as an anti caking agent, but Europe also allows it to be added to wine to remove excess iron and copper ions. Therefore, the toxicity of potassium ferrocyanide is very low. In addition, the allowable addition amount of salt is also very small, so there is no need to worry about its toxicity.
So why add potassium ferrocyanide to table salt? Because it has anti knot function, It can prevent the salt from coagulating into blocks, facilitate more accurate control of the amount of salt added, and make the food salty and mild. Therefore, the salt added with potassium ferrocyanide has no harm, and there is no additional benefit if it is not added. Therefore, we don't need to worry about the toxicity of the salt added with potassium ferrocyanide.
③ Sodium nitrite
The incidents of sodium nitrite poisoning we saw on the Internet are all illegal traders who add sodium nitrite into food as table salt. This amount usually exceeds the toxic dose, so it often causes poisoning.
As a food additive, sodium nitrite is an indispensable substance in cured meat products. In these foods, the content of sodium nitrite is required Less than 0.03 g/kg Assuming a person is 60 kg, the dose of sodium nitrite beyond the safety range is about 6 mg, that is, 0.006 g, while the content of sodium nitrite in meat products of about 100 g is generally less than 0.003 g. That is to say, generally speaking, the content of sodium nitrite is below the safe range.
Another important reason why sodium nitrite has become a "street mouse" is its carcinogenicity. However, this is a misunderstanding of the public, Sodium nitrite itself is not carcinogenic. If other organic amines are ingested together in the body, sodium nitrite will be metabolized to nitrosamines, which are carcinogenic 。
In addition, ascorbic acid can significantly inhibit the carcinogenicity of nitrosamines. Therefore, eating more fresh fruits will help reduce the toxicity of sodium nitrite intake.
In any case, although sodium nitrite is not very toxic, it is also one of the more dangerous food additives. This substance is widely found in bacon, pickles and other foods. Therefore, although it is a legal additive, I still suggest that the smaller the intake, the better. This substance is more or less added in various meat products. It is always good to eat less.
④ Sodium glutamate
This is the main ingredient of MSG!
In recent years, whenever Xiaobian goes to a small shop on the street, he can always hear some customers asking for "no MSG" in the food. We can also see some people on the Internet saying that MSG is actually toxic and should not be eaten.
But the food with MSG is really delicious! Don't worry, the toxicity of MSG itself can be almost ignored. Of course, it has sodium ions attached to it. If you take too much of it, it may cause hypertension and other diseases like taking too much salt. (The chemical composition of table salt is sodium chloride, which also contains sodium ions)
There are popular online claims that MSG can make people blush, dizziness and other symptoms. However, these claims are basically groundless and groundless.
When sodium glutamate enters the human body, gastric acid can convert it into glutamic acid. Glutamic acid is one of the twenty essential amino acids for human body to synthesize protein. It is obvious that the toxicity of sodium glutamate is something we don't need to worry about.
After reading so much, are you less afraid of food additives?
In fact, most of the legal additives in the national standard are based on this principle. These legal doses prescribed by the state are based on clear scientific basis and rigorous scientific experiments. Adding these additives to food will not cause any harm to our body. We don't need to worry too much about these legal food additives, but we should treat food additives correctly.
