E for Additives. Maurice Hanssen
have nothing to hide and everything to gain by telling us all about the good wholesome ingredients that they may be using.
The same lack of information is permitted on fancy confectionery products packed as single items in such forms as a figure, an animal, cigarette, egg, or any other fancy form. Again, some manufacturers tell you what the product is made from. Let us hope the rest follow suit.
Additives in Ingredients and Some Other Exemptions
If an additive has been used in an ingredient which is part of a product containing a number of different ingredients, then the additive does not have to be declared if it serves no significant technological function in the finished product. So, if you buy a breakfast cereal containing apple flakes and the apple flakes look white, this could be because they were carefully processed or it could be because they have an added preservative. There is no way of knowing the difference unless the producer volunteers the information. The same considerations apply to a wide range of foodstuffs.
Bread and Other Fresh Foods
Fresh unwrapped bread carries no list of ingredients simply because there is nowhere to put it. The same applies to cakes and pastries. But when the product is wrapped and sold in an off-the-shelf form, then certain ingredients have to be listed, and you may well find that your wholemeal bread and, even more probably, your brown bread, contains added caramel and numerous other ingredients that are not necessary in the kitchen.
There is no good reason why the foods in the baker’s or the butcher’s that have been prepared on the premises have no list of ingredients. It would be easy to do and it would help us make an informed choice.
In addition to the unnamed additives on unwrapped bread there are also additives which do not have to be declared even when the product is wrapped. Chief among these must be the flour bleach, benzoyl peroxide (no E number). It is certainly very puzzling that we in Britain need to use a bleach at all when most leading European countries have either banned bleaches or found them completely unnecessary. Another area of contamination is the lingering presence of pesticides and fungicides applied not only to the growing crops but also in the storage silos to prevent insect infestation and fungal growth.
Ham and other meat products on the delicatessen counter have to show the amount of water present (at any rate to some extent, see page 25) but the other additives only need to be identified by their category name, a throw-back to the 1970 regulations. So a ham description may say ‘maximum 25 per cent added water, added preservative and colour’, unless it is in a packet.
Such loopholes are a negation of all the progress made in other areas of food labelling. The largest part of all food sold in this way is produced by manufacturers who are perfectly able to provide a label for the point of sale giving, in a legible size of lettering, the same information that would be required if the same product were sold in a packet instead of loose, or else it is produced by the shop itself, who must know the recipe.
Even the present very limited regulations are being openly abused in large numbers of shops where no ingredient information at all is supplied about the loose foods on sale. Our Trading Standards Officers, who should be enforcing the rules, have limited resources but are usually most helpful when apparent breaches of the regulations are drawn to their attention. It is a courtesy, however, to first warn the shop management of any likely problem so that they can put things right.
Medicines
A licensed medicine has only to state the details of the active ingredient or ingredients. All the other components of the product are exempt from labelling requirements.
It is not at all uncommon for the good effects of the medicine to be entirely negated by the adverse effects of the other ingredients being used. This is especially true of colours and preservatives. The Ministry of Health, some time ago, distributed a consultative paper to pharmaceutical manufacturers asking them if they would agree to list a limited range of additives which cause side-effects in sensitive people. It is thought that most manufacturers were happy to comply, but no legislation has so far resulted.
In the meantime, the Ministry has said that if you have a problem, all you have to do when buying a medicine is to ask the pharmacist if it has certain ingredients in it. Unfortunately, the pharmacist has no idea because he is not given the information either. He has to go back to the manufacturer who may be unwilling to give him the answer or even to find somebody who has the answer readily available. When the facts emerge they are often disturbing, as in the case of the chewable children’s vitamins which contain five different azo-dyes and ground sugar to make them pretty and palatable. There is no reason why pharmaceutical manufacturers should not volunteer to reveal the list of ingredients, and there is no reason why they should be exempted from so doing.
3. Golden Eggs and Pink-Fleshed Fish
A happy free-range chicken, able to scratch around for its food and choosing many different pigment-containing and mineralrich items, will usually produce richly golden and strongly shelled eggs. The less fortunate battery hens have to rely upon what is in their feed to give their eggs colour. The most important of these colour-forming substances are, together with other oxygen-containing carotenoids, known by the collective name of xanthophylls (E161).
The xanthophyll content of these fresh feeds is not constant and rapidly degrades during storage periods, so poor colour is a particular problem during the winter months.
Because of the high prices of imported grains compared to those from home, even colour-containing alfafa and maize have been replaced by such cereals as wheat and barley which feed the hens just as well if various fats and soya meals are added, but have no pigments present. A typical laying chicken ration would be as follows:
| Wheat | 600.00 kg |
| Extracted soya | 155.00 |
| Full-fat soya | 50.00 |
| Barley | 77.50 |
| Limestone flour | 80.00 |
| Fish meal | 25.00 |
| Vitamin and trace minerals, calcium and salt | 12.50 |
| Total | 1000.00 kg |
The egg producer studies his market and knows that eggs for table use sell best if the yolks are a nice golden colour, while eggs used for the manufacture of bakery products, pasta and sauces are better yellow.
Egg yolk colours are measured on a scale from pale yellow to deep orange in shades of 1–15. Table eggs are generally at about No. 11 on the scale, although some producers prefer a very deep orange colour for which they demand higher prices. In practice, the feed supplier helps the egg producer choose the desired colour and then adds concentrated red or yellow pigments of synthetic or natural origin to produce the desired effect which is then checked on a regular basis.
It is known that certain free-range egg producers have added naturally occurring pigments to the ration, especially during the cold months, although the legal situation regarding this does not appear to have been established.
Maize-Fed Chickens
In both France and the United States maize-fed or, as the Americans say, corn-fed, chickens