Banned Food Additives

Food additives are substances added to food to preserve flavor or enhance its taste, appearance, or other qualities. In the safety measures, the amount of food additive to be consumed is scientifically specified. Because of this reason, the list of the permitted food additive is published. Any accepted food additive is permitted on the basis of its increasing the shelf value of food, ability to maintain the food's nutritional value, ability to increase its appeal, etc.

Many food additives-synthetic pigments had never been tested for toxicity or other adverse effects. Historical records show that injuries, even deaths, resulted from tainted synthetic pigments. Certain food additives are in the list of banned food additives, because of many reasons and one of these is the hazard it presents to the consumer in the form of allergies and reactions. And if the food additive is considered hazardous even at the recommended quantity then it is considered as a banned food additive. The safety of food colors and other food additives in the EU is evaluated by the European Food Safety Authority. Most other countries have their own regulations and list of banned food additive which cannot be used in various applications.

Banned Food Additives test at Alfa Chemistry

Based on professional knowledge and experienced staff for food additives test, Alfa Chemistry not only can provide multivariate qualitative and quantitative analysis methods, but also can provide spectral data pre-processing for detection of banned food additives. These methods include but not limited:

• Gas Chromatography (GC)
• Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS/MS)
• Liquid Chromatography (LC)
• Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS/MS)
• High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC)
• Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS)
• Iteratively Cubic Spline Fitting (ICSF)
• Principal Component Analysis (PCA)

In addition, we have unparalleled platforms and rich-experienced researchers for testing banned food additives. E numbers are codes for substances that are permitted to be used as food additives for use within the European Union and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). The banned food additives we can test are as follows:

Tabe1. Banned food additives test items at Alfa Chemistry.

At Alfa Chemistry, our laboratory has the state-of-the-art instrumentation to analyze banned food additives in food products. We offer food additives test services to detect and quantify most food additives and banned food additives with high sensitivity and efficiency in accordance with the WHO standard for food additive limits. Based on professional knowledge and experienced staff, Alfa Chemistry provides a wide range of information about banned food additives. If you have any questions or specific needs, do not hesitate to contact us.

Reference:
1.He, S; et al. Multivariate qualitative analysis of banned additives in food safety using surface enhanced Raman scattering spectroscopy. Spectrochimica Acta Part A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy. 2015, 137: 1092-1099.