What is the function of preservatives?

Food preservatives are a major category of food additives, which are used to prevent or delay food spoilage and prolong the preservation and storage period of food.

There is no problem in using additives reasonably.

For some foods that don't need preservatives, in order to meet the needs of consumers, many merchants mark "preservative-free" on the packaging, giving consumers the illusion that "other similar products add preservatives and their products are healthier". If consumers encounter this kind of publicity when buying products, it is wise to compare the ingredients list of similar products and not have this advertisement.

According to China's National Standards for Food Safety and Standards for the Use of Food Additives, there are currently more than 20 kinds of preservatives allowed to be used in food, such as sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate and dehydroacetic acid. There are specific regulations on what kind of food they can use and how much they can use. However, the function of preservatives is not absolute. It can only prolong the storage period of some foods within a certain limit, and its antiseptic effect will be different according to the change of environmental pH. For processed foods, the preservatives or other food additives that people shout are not as "horrible" as consumers think. According to national standards, the rational use of preservatives and other food additives will not cause harm to health.

Some foods do not need preservatives at all.

Taking brewing soy sauce as an example, the shelf life of this kind of products is basically about two years without adding preservatives. Brewed soy sauce has undergone strict high-temperature sterilization, aseptic filling and other processes, and the survival and reproduction of microorganisms are strictly controlled. In addition, the raw materials for brewing soy sauce are generally soybeans, wheat and so on. These food crops will produce a variety of amino acids under the action of fermentation bacteria, and then they will metabolize phenylpyruvic acid, phenylacetic acid and benzoic acid, which also have the effect of inhibiting microbial reproduction and growth.

In addition to soy sauce, vinegar is similar. At the same time, canned food with long shelf life, instant noodles and other products do not need preservatives to help extend the shelf life. From time to time, the view that "canned food has a long shelf life because of adding a lot of preservatives" and "instant noodles contain a lot of preservatives" has been repeatedly refuted.

Not all foods without additives are necessarily beneficial to consumers' health.

Some foods with high protein content need preservatives to ensure the quality and safety of products. If no preservative is added to the product, once there is a quality problem, the responsibility and risk of the enterprise will be greater. Therefore, under the formulation of the national standard, it is actually a guarantee for consumers' food safety for enterprises to add preservatives in a suitable range. In addition, he also said that with the rapid development of food additive industry, food additives have been working hard in the direction of safety, stability, health and nature, and have achieved good results in the development process. For example, food pigments used to be chemical, but now they are basically natural. With the continuous superposition of consumers' demand for great health and the continuous success of high-tech research and development at the industrial end, the entire additive industry has been greatly improved.

Therefore, what we need to guard against is not food with preservatives, but food with excessive preservatives illegally added.

The multifunctional food additive detector of Guanyu Instrument can quickly detect the content indexes of preservatives, pigments and other additives (sulfur dioxide, sulfite, potassium bromate, phosphate, indigo, brilliant blue, carmine, pyrophosphate, sodium dihydrogen pyrophosphate, tripolyphosphate, etc.). ). Determine the safety of food.