Additives in food may lower or reduce the nutritional value in foods, add empty calories to foods, or enrich certain foods with certain vitamins.

Food manufacturers add food additives for various reasons.
Food additives are added to foods to make them taste nicer, especially when they are labelled fat-free or low-fat. Any fat content that has been reduced is usually made up for in adding other substances and additives to make up for the taste.

Get into the habit of reading food labels. We all have a responsibility for our health and also for our children’s health.

Food labels can be quite confusing. I would just stay away from processed foods especially if you don’t really know for sure what’s been added to it.

Additives are also generally added to processed foods for colouring purposes, to make them look better, taste better, or to increase shelf-life. For example, cakes and biscuits may contain hydrogenated oil for preservation, and therefore make it last much longer. However, hydrogenated oil and trans fats are dangerous to your health. They are the types of fats that clog up your arteries.

If you see “hydrogenated oil” or “partially hydrogenated oil” on the food label, do not buy the product. Trans fats are linked to some lifestyle diseases, especially heart disease. According to Daily Mail UK, trans fats are responsible for 7,000 deaths in the UK every year.

In the US and some Scandanavian countries, trans fats have been banned.

Additives in food are also added by food manufacturers to fortify cereals with nutrients that may have been lost during processing.

How do you know what food additives are good or bad?
The answer lies in reading the food labels. If it contains for example, hydrogenated oil, and you have even remotely heard anything controversial about it. Do not buy the product. If you are not sure, research about it first until you are convinced.

Some additives in food are colouring agents that are added to make the food in question have colour and look nice and pleasing to the eye.

Some juices have extra additives in them to add extra vitamins. But then again, some of these same juices are little more than sugar and water, so you really have to look at all round information about it.

If food additives were needed in the first place to add to processed foods, then it makes you question whether they really had to be processed in the first place.

Too many additives in food can also have hyper-active effects in children, and contribute to diseases in adults.

Farmers markets are usually going to have foods that have been locally grown. It is best to always buy fruits and vegetables that are in season. Any foods you are buying that are not in season are likely to have been in storage from the time they were last in season.

Additives in food also include sodium or salt, sugar, added fats and oils, hydrogenated and trans fats, colourings, preservative, stabilisers, emulsifiers and many others.