How do we know if food additives are safe?

Food additives play an important role in today’s food supply. They may extend shelf life, serve as a processing aid, add color, flavor, and/or texture.

Food additives allow consumer to enjoy safe, wholesome, tasty foods year round without the inconvenience of growing own foods or shopping daily.

An additive may be either nutritive or non-nutritive: it may be physiologically active or inert: it may he present intentionally to achieve some modification in the food, or incidentally and serving no useful purpose in the final product.

A decision to use a substance in such a way it is, or is likely to become, a food additive should be based on the assurance that the use will be safe and that it will benefit the consumer.

Concern regarding the safety of food additives has declined in the United States since the enactment of the saccharin moratorium. The study indicates that only 21% of the supermarket shoppers were concern about additives and preservatives, a significant decline from the earlier study.

Food additive are generally intended to provide important benefits to the producer or consumer of foods. But sometimes these additives cause unwanted or unhealthful effects.

Often these undesirable effects of food additives are due to their excessive or accidental use; usage at an appropriate stage of production, processing or storage or from a lack of purity or quality.

An additive may be injurious to health when consumed in moderate doses over extended time periods. When the risks or benefits of food additive use ar considered, estimation must be made of the long term or lifetime consumption of the additive.

FDA approves all food additives before they can be added to foods. USDA authorized additives used in meat and poultry products.

Before manufacturers’ may use an additive, they must prove that the additive does what it was intended to do and that it will no be harmful to humans at the expected level of consumption.

In its original implementing regulations, the FDA defined safe to demand ‘convincing evidence which establishes with reasonable certainty that no harm will result’. In 1971, agency revised this definition to require proof of ‘no significant risk of harm’, but it revised the definition again in 1976.

In current definition safe means that here are is reasonably certainty in minds of competent scientists that the substance is not harmful under the intended condition use.
How do we know if food additives are safe?