Aunt Wang and Aunt Liu chatted together after dinner, talking about their children.

Aunt Wang said: “The child can’t handle it anymore. She doesn’t eat when she gets home, and buys some junk food to eat every day. Eat, she won’t listen.”

Aunt Liu quickly echoed: “Yes, yes, my son likes instant noodles the most. I heard that there are dozens of food additives in it. Eating it will cause cancer. I don’t let him eat it, and he throws a tantrum at me.”

“In the past few years, has there been less food additives? Poisoned milk powder, Clenbuterol…”

“Hey, what can you do? We parents can only worry about it.”

< p> They both sighed deeply as they spoke.

Food on the supermarket shelf

First, food additives are really evil the source?

“Clenbuterol pork”, “melamine milk powder”, “dyed steamed buns” and other incidents have made the public disappointed with food additives, and even demonized food additives too much. When it comes to food safety and cancer, they all think that food additives are the cause.

Actually,Clenbuterol, melamine, Sudan red, etc. are all illegal additives, not food additives< /strong>.

Food additives are safe for human health as long as they are used reasonably. Its main function is to improve the quality of food and make its color and flavor better. At the same time, it can also be antiseptic, fresh, prolong the shelf life of food, and some are due to the needs of processing technology.

The country also has strict regulations on food additives< /strong>, 3 conditions must be met:

• The variety of food additives must be permitted by the state;
• Businesses must use food additives within the scope of application, and cannot use them beyond the scope;
• When businesses use food additives, they cannot exceed the maximum allowable use amount or the maximum residual amount .

Moreover, my country’s restrictions on the use of food additives are more cautious and conservative than foreign countries.

There are 2,397 kinds of food additives that are allowed to be used in China, while more than 10,000 kinds of food additives are used in the world on average, of which there are more than 5,000 kinds in the United States. Except for Chinese-specific food additives such as sweet-scented osmanthus extract, which have been proven harmless to the human body with a thousand-year history, generally foreign food additives need to be approved for use by more than two developed countries and applied for a period of time. , my country will consider including it in the list of allowed food additives.

So you don’t need to smell “food additives” to change color.

Second, instant noodles are all preservatives, will they cause cancer?

Instant noodles are delicious and convenient, but it is rumored that eating a pack of instant noodles takes 32 days to detoxify. There are many food additives in instant noodles, which can cause cancer if eaten too much. side worried.

As mentioned above, as long as my country’s food additives meet the standards to increase, it will not cause harm. The claim that instant noodles are carcinogenic means that instant noodles contain a possible carcinogen – acrylamide.

In 1994, the International Agency for Research on Cancer under the WHO classified acrylamide as a 2A carcinogen, which means that acrylamide has certain toxicity and is carcinogenic to animals sex, but there is currently insufficient evidence that it causes cancer in humans.

According to the internationally renowned journal “Food and Chemical Toxicology” A study published in the journal in 2010 showed that acrylamide intake of 2.6-16 micrograms/kg body weight per day can cause cancer.Take a 50 kg body weight adult as an example, acrylamide’s The carcinogenic dose is 130-800 mcg/day.

The amount of acrylamide in instant noodles is not large, with an average content of 15-80 micrograms/kg, which will not achieve carcinogenic effects. Therefore, normal consumption of instant noodles will not cause harm to health.

However, due toinstant noodles are high in calories and contain more salt and fat, Frequent high-salt, high-oil and heavy-taste diets will increase the risk of chronic diseases such as obesity and hypertension, and will also affect children’s normal taste development. So there is nothing wrong with eating instant noodles once in a while, but it is not recommended to eat it every day.

Third, these three additives should be touched less.

Food additives are very common in life and are used legally harmless to health. In many cases, food safety incidents are mainly caused by the excessive use of food additives by unscrupulous merchants.

1. Potassium aluminum sulfate

Potassium aluminum sulfate, commonly known as alum, is often used as food leavening agent, dehydrating agent and stabilizer.

For example, when making fried foods such as fried dough sticks and shrimp chips, potassium aluminum sulfate is added to make it more bulky. When making vermicelli and vermicelli by hand, potassium aluminum sulfate is added to increase transparency and fast setting, making it easy to cut and not easy to stick during cooking.

The use of aluminum potassium sulfate in food will produce a certain amount of aluminum residue, and the state stipulates that the aluminum residue in food should be less than 500 mg/kg.

If the aluminum residue in food exceeds the standard, aluminum will slowly accumulate in the body, which will damage the human body over time It may lead to diseases such as anemia, osteoporosis, neurological disorders, etc., and even serious diseases such as dementia and uremia.

2. cyclamate

The chemical name of sodium cyclamate is sodium cyclohexyl sulfamate, which generally refers to sodium or calcium cyclamate.

Because the sweetness of sweetener is 30-80 times that of sucrose, and its stable nature, pure and natural sweetness without peculiar smell, merchants often use cyclamate As a sweetener, adds sweetness and improves taste.

According to national regulations, sodium cyclamate is allowed to be used in canned fruits, preserved fruits, bread, cakes, biscuits, fermented bean curd, pickled vegetables, compound seasonings, beverages and prepared wine, etc. in food.

But cyclamate is not allowed in liquor . Some small wineries will take the risk of adding lower-cost sodium cyclamate to baijiu to cover the bitterness, thereby improving the taste and saving brewing time.

According to the recommendations of the World Health Organization/Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, The acceptable daily intake of cyclamate is <11 mg/kg body weight, taking a 50 kg adult as an example, the daily intake of sodium cyclamate should not exceed 550 mg per day.

If you often eat foods with excessive sodium cyclamate content, excessive intake of sodium cyclamate may damage the liver, kidneys and nervous system, etc. disability, teratogenicity, and even carcinogenicity.

3. Sulfur dioxide

Sulfur dioxide is a common food additive that can be used as a preservative, antioxidant, bleaching agent, and is widely used in dried vegetables and fruits, pickles, fruit juice and wine.

The “National Food Safety Standard for the Use of Food Additives” clearly stipulates the residual amount of sulfur dioxide in food, in dried fruit. It cannot exceed 0.1 g/kg, dried vegetables and fruits cannot exceed 0.2 g/kg, and candied fruits cannot exceed 0.35 g/kg.

Under normal circumstances, a small amount of food containing sulfur dioxide will not cause harm to health, but some businesses do not strictly control raw materials in the production process, or It is the excessive use of sulfur dioxide, which may lead to excessive sulfur dioxide residues in food.

However, if you eat foods with excessive sulfur dioxide residues for a long time, resulting in excessive intake of sulfur dioxide, it may cause gastrointestinal discomfort such as nausea and vomiting, and it will also affect the liver and kidneys. Organs cause some damage.

Melamine and clenbuterol in the public eye are actually illegal additives, not food additive. And food additives are harmless to human health as long as they meet national standards and are added to food.

#Health2022#

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