Food Additives

The use of food additives—introduced at the food-processing stage—is the largest single difference between organic and nonorganic foods. Common additives include food coloring, bulking agents, preservatives, sweeteners, and acids. Each is useful, but there is a long-standing and lively debate over whether they do more harm than good. The increasingly widespread industrial processing of food in advanced societies has brought with it a similar increase in the use of additives, in turn resulting in closer monitoring of food safety on the part of consumers and food-regulatory agencies. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is charged with monitoring and inspecting most foods in the United States.