E number guide

You were right, mother
Times Online - UK
One of the abiding memories of my childhood is of my mother banging on about the evils of processed foods, E numbers, additives, apples sprayed with chemicals…

Chemical stories can make you blind
Spiked - London,UK
by Helene Guldberg. Do you know what ‘E-numbers‘ are? Like me, you may have been led to believe that they are hazardous food additives…

Fishing Lines: The small fry escaped - find the villains
Independent - London,England,UK
They were being given food all e numbers and artificall colours, now they can eat healthy, and fishermen wont be able to catch them and they will have to eat.

From www.foodproductiondaily.com

Researchers in Ireland may have developed a naturally occurring enzyme preparation for baking, which increases loaf volume and crumb softness while also extending shelf life by three days.

I’m instantly suspicious of the phrase “developed a naturally occurring”. Is it naturally occuring or not? Does that make it better than a chemical (E-Number) or worse (GM foods). The word natural isn’t neccessarily to be trusted.

Anyways. The enzymes that are called hemicellulases, work on compounds found in wheat that inhibit the optimal development of dough. Hemicellulases act on arabinoxylans which are found naturally in layers of bran. These are large molecules that interfere physically with dough formation when water is added to flour.

Personally, we avoid wheat bread like the plague but I’m happy to see this working with Rye as well as wheat. It’s a long article so click on the link at the top of this posting to read it in full. More information of trying to manipulate the bread more. Apparently:

According to the scientists, the next step in their research will be to find a way to increase the amount of dietary fibre in bread while retaining crumb softness.

People really can’t be bothered to chew, can they?

A Welsh school in Ysgol Deganwy, Conwy has taken part in a year long trial to improve the diets of their students and observe the results. The headmaster, Dafydd Roberts, told the Daily Post newspaper that the educational psychologist working with the school “found 69% of children made significant increases - greater progress than you would expect over a one year period - in thinking skills, 50% in number, 33% in spelling and 30% in reading.”

He added that the staff noticed less afternoon lethagy and children were generally calmer “There was less hyperactivity, which led to improved concentration. Nearly half the parents who completed a questionnaire on the food project noticed a change for the better in their children’s behaviour.”

Thanks to this trial, e-numbers and a healthier style of diet is being applied all across Conwy country. Read the full story on the icNorthWales website.

Fresh from his success in the war against bad meals in UK schools, it seems that Jamie Oliver has taken his fight across the atlantic to the US. In his appearance on NBC’s Today show. He highlighted one particular success, saying “Definitely. I mean I think what, what I’ve always come and worked in America a lot and what we’ve achieved in England over the last couple of years is standards, laws. I mean, literally two days ago, laws were put in place to ban all the junk in the vending machines. Not let the processed foods in.”

He mentions the amount of e-numbers currently present in the school meals that are served up. You can read more about this on NewsBusters website.

A study involving 1800 rats (equal quantities of male and female) had previously linked aspartame intake with increased lymphomas and leukemias in the female ones. The study was set up to stimulate the amount of aspartame that humans would take, but the industry argues that the amounts the scientists used was out - by a large factor. They hit out saying that “The researchers at Ramazzini have not followed the internationally established protocol for evaluation of animal carcinogenicity study findings,� said the organization. Their justification for this mainly being, it seems, that the Ramazzini study is not in the MedLine (National Library of Medicine) database.

Further Reading:

• E951 - Aspartame
• in-pharmatechnologist.com

Crisp makers are defending their products in Ireland after it was revealed that 7% of children there consume at least one packet a day. This is part of the blame for childhood obesity. The defense of the manufacturers is that crisps are natural products make from natural nutritional ingredients. Jennifer Allen from the Limerick post rubbishes this saying that “while the crisps may have started off as natural raw ingredients, the nutrition is largely lost through processingâ€?.
(more…)

The Daily Mail reports that the food additive Sunset Yellow (E110) has been linked with cancer. The colouring is often found in curries, sweets, soft drinks, chocolate snacks, sauces and pickles. Although already banned in Finland and Norway, and removed from its products by the supermarket chain “Co-op” the FSA says that it the problem is small enough not to consider a ban.

The problem is not so much in the colour itself. But that as a byproduct of the production process there may be small quantities of Sudan 1 present. The chemical colouring that caused mass recall of food products earlier this year.

Read the article from The Daily Mail, including statements from the Food Standards Agency on the page titled “Food colour linked to cancer”

This site will gradually grow to list and document all the E numbers used as additives in foods. For more info at the moment, visit the About page and the page I’m currently writing called History of the E number