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.

The increasingly widespread industrial processing of food in advanced societies has brought with it a similar increase in the use of additives, including food coloring, bulking agents, preservatives, sweeteners, and acids

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There are two types of food additives: direct and indirect. A direct additive is a substance that is purposefully added to a food product to achieve a desired effect, such as a sweetener. These are generally listed on the food's ingredients label. An indirect additive is one that enters the food product by way of its packaging, storage, or transportation. Organic food has been available for many years and has become ever easier to find in stores, no matter what your income or preferences. Whether such organic food products are in some way “superior” to processed foods or not, they continue to gain popularity. One of the biggest advantages organic foods offer the consumer is that they contain no additives. Although a majority of grocery stores carry at least some types of organic foods on their shelves, production of organic foods represents only 2 percent of the total volume of foods produced for sale in the United States. Significant research has been conducted on the healthiness and growing methods, and the wealth of scientific evidence available shows conclusively that organic foods sold in the United States are healthier, are grown with more careful attention, and are far less adulterated than processed foods.

Conventional and organic farming are distinctly different. Agribusiness—conventional industrial agricultural farms in the United States and elsewhere—uses large quantities of additives in their food processing activities. Among these additives are chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides used to grow vegetables and grain and hormones, prophylactic antibiotics, amphetamines, and other medications to promote growth and prevent disease in market animals, including beef cows, fryer chickens, and pigs. These additives are also given to producing animals like laying hens and milk cows, for example, and many of these [Page 155]animals are kept in tightly packed pens. Organic farmers apply natural “biofertilizers;” use insects and birds to reduce pests and disease; feed animals with organic, nonbonemeal feed; and provide wider, less-restricted access to outdoor movement to promote “happy and healthy” animals.