Preservatives In Food: Benefits And Risks

While natural preservatives such as salt or vinegar have been tried and tested for centuries, the industry digs deep into the chemical box to make food durable. Whether and how artificial preservatives affect health is a hotly debated topic.

What are preservatives?

The function of food additives is to optimize the product for the consumer. Consistency, taste, appearance, and shelf life should be of consistently high quality in order to promote sales. In addition, helpers such as leavening agents make industrial production easier and faster. Preservatives delay spoilage and make food last longer. Not everyone likes it: While centuries-old methods such as preserving fruit and vegetables by boiling, pickling, or canning are generally well tolerated, chemical preservatives can trigger allergies or, scientifically correctly formulated, pseudo-allergies. This is also the reason why there is a statutory obligation to label such preservatives. They should be listed with an E number or their name, for example, sodium propionate (E 281), which is found in packaged baked goods.

The symptoms of allergies triggered by preservatives range from a skin rash to headaches and shortness of breath: all very unspecific signs of illness that can have many causes. The detection of an existing pseudoallergy to certain preservatives is therefore difficult. The discussion about the question “Is glutamate unhealthy?” shows how controversial the effect of additives is. For those affected, the flavor enhancer is the clear trigger for nausea, headaches, and body aches, but scientific proof has not yet been provided. The situation is similar with preservatives: the reliable diagnosis of an allergy can become a lengthy affair.

Natural or artificially colored: why are there black olives?

There are dark olives in nature, but not black ones through and through. Dye is used to helping with the deep black olives. The industry here was probably trying to live up to wishful thinking about a flawless olive. Naturally dark olives are more in the direction of anthracite-olive in color but are usually much more aromatic than colored ones.

How to track down an allergy

In order to get to the bottom of symptoms yourself and establish any connections with preservatives, you can get a list of preservatives in food and keep a food diary. Record everything you eat and drink and note the preservatives in a separate column. Write down any symptoms you may have. Over time, triggers can be narrowed down and specifically omitted. If there is an improvement or if there are no symptoms, you have probably caught the culprit.