Food additives are a very broad concept that includes all the small ingredients that have a specific effect on the food. The salt, sugar, vinegar, etc. we contact every day are also food additives. However, people usually talk about the word, flavors and fragrances are more commonly used materials that are not commonly used, especially synthetic. Due to the resistance to industrial products, people have more doubts about food additives than affirmation.

Food processing, especially in the growing number of formulas in modern society, often encounters a variety of deficiencies. In order to overcome these defects, special treatments or some additives are used. For example, juice, we want it to be stored for a longer period of time without delamination, we need to add thickener to increase the viscosity; and coffee mate, we need it to be evenly dispersed into the coffee, we need some dispersant, some Surfactants can achieve this goal; yogurt and ice cream, we want to have a variety of flavors, add a variety of flavors, and in order to get the color corresponding to the taste, add different pigments, such as yellow with lemon flavor, The red color is accompanied by the strawberry flavor... It is the combination of different additives and different production conditions that produces a wide variety of foods. Otherwise, yogurt is always white and only sour, flavors and spices are probably less attractive; ice cream and cakes don't have as much "artistic shape"; bread, probably as monotonous as steamed bread... can be said, appropriate Food additives are an indispensable ingredient in modern foods.

Food additives are not necessarily synthetic materials, many of which are derived from natural flora and fauna or bacteria. For example, thickeners are usually extracted from algae, plant fibers, or bacterial secretions. They are usually some polysaccharides that dissolve in water and can greatly increase the viscosity. Thickened liquid foods do not tend to stratify, appear more uniform, and flavors and flavors tend to have a better taste when eaten. Many pigments, flavors, and lecithins as emulsifiers are also derived from plants.