Food Additives: History and Types

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I. Introduction
Throughout history, humans have been obsessed with food, and to make this food taste better or last longer, humans have added substances to their food. These substances are called food additives. Food additives have been used as long ago as 5000 years ago to pickle vegetables, and to preserve fish and meats. Now food additives have taken its place and have had a wide range of uses including stabilizing the Ph of foods, increase saltiness, prevent oxidation, increase shelf life, enhance texture, and much more. Food additives have a general connotation that they are man made, but food additives can both be synthetic or naturally derived. Examples of naturally derived food additives include vitamin C (corbic acid), sodium, or lecithin found in soybeans. Generally, these food additives are used in very small quantities and are very carefully monitored by various scientific organizations.
In the early 1900s, food additives were used extensively after their potential was revealed. The problem is that in this time period, food additives were not controlled nor monitored. Naturally, companies added more and more food additives to make their food more appealing, and this posed dangerous safety concerns. For instance borax loaded onto foods. Borax is shown to be toxic, and is shown to be a toxin for reproduction. However, today borax is used to lengthen the shelf life of many foods in other countries illegally, though regulations strive to keep these toxic food additives in control.
The term food additives has many definitions which can be applied from different organizations. These definitions are complex and lengthy to touch on as many regulations as possible. An excerpt from the FDA’s (US Food and Drug Administration), de...

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...asmine Motarjemi. N.p.: Elsevier, 2014. 466-70. Vol. 2 of Encyclopedia of Food Safety. 4 vols. Science Direct. Web. 6 May 2014.
“Monosodium Glutamate.” Healthy Years Feb. 2014: 8. Academic OneFile. Web. 6 May 2014.
O’Mullane, Matthew, Glenn Stanley, and Barry Fields. “Food Additives: Sweeteners.” Hazards and Diseases. Ed. Yasmine Motarjemi. N.p.: Elsevier, 2014. Vol. 2 of Encyclopedia of Food Safety. 4 vols. Science Direct. Web. 6 May 2014.
Schyvens, Chris. “Food Additives: Antioxidants.” Hazards and Diseases. Ed. Yasmine Motarjemi. N.p.: Elsevier, 2014. 455-58. Vol. 2 of Encyclopedia of Food Safety. 4 vols. Science Direct. Web. 6 May 2014.
Tomaska, Luba, and Simon Brooke-Taylor. “Food Additives: Food Additives – General.” Hazards and Diseases. Ed. Yasmine Motarjemi. N.p.: Elsevier, 2014. Vol. 2 of Encyclopedia of Food Safety. 4 vols. Science Direct. Web. 6 May 2014.

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