New member with a shed load of Venison!

[Patricia Thornton]

Although I would prefer food additives to be natural rather than synthetic, on the whole do not have the problem with E numbers that others seem to.

I often wonder why I do not remember people having a problem with food additives until is was made compulsory for manufacturers to give a full list of ingredients using standard codes, i.e., E numbers.

[Fallow Buck]

Dougal,

Thanks for that. I suppose it is very easy to fall into the trap that every E-# is bad.... A bit of knowledge makes things a little clearer.

I personally know nothing about which is which, so I didn't even look what the number part was on the packet, just counting the E's instead!!

Regards,
FB

[Fluffybunny]

Whilst E numbers are undoubtedly "safe", not being a chemist or a nutritionist I'm at a loss as to whether or not these ones in particular have an effect on the levels of hyperactivity my kids experience when they've eaten certain foods.

Call me old fashioned but I suppose I'd just rather add salt to my sausages than Sodium Chloride!

And I didnt miss the irony of one of them being a "flavour enhancer". Isn't that what I'm trying to do?!

Anyway, its good to know a bit more about what they actually do and that some of them are naturally occurring in other foodstuffs, but I think in future I'll mix my own "au-naturelle".

[Oddley]

Here is what the E-numbers are, and some possible side effects. I don't know how accurate the info is, you will have to decide for yourself.

http://www.satori-5.co.uk/word_articles ... tives.html

E450, Diphosphates (Leavening agent.) Excessive use may lead to osteoporosis.

E451 Triphosphates (Stabilisers)

E223 Sodium metabisulphite (Preservative) Danger of severe asthmatic reaction.

E621 Monosodium Glutamate (Flavour Enhancer) In crisps, sauces, soups, stock cubes etc. "Excitotoxin" . Seizures, facial burning sensations, chest pains, bloating headaches, nausea and asthma.

E301, Sodium ascorbate (Anti-oxident)

E331 Sodium monosodium, di-sodium and tri-sodium citrates (Anti-oxidants) Excessive consumption could trigger muscle spasms of depress the heart.

[jenny_haddow]

I suppose the benefit of E number is the fact that the classifications are there and you can check them out if you have concerns. Obviously there are enough concerns to warrant some of the investigations that have produced the comments listed by Oddley's post.

Some are OK, but I do remember a memorable occasion when I was driving my nephew home after he had stayed with us for a few days. His mother had warned me not to buy him a certain fizzy drink as it sent him crazy, so I didn't. When we stopped in a service station en route he bought himself the said drink, glugged half of it down before I stopped him. The rest of the journey (some 80 miles) I found the only thing to calm him was to sing (poor kid!), I started with '100 men went to mow' and it lasted all the way! Counting down from 100 certainly made him focus.

[dougal]

There's a decent write-up on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_numbers
with lots of links to pages concerning the particular individual items.

Its important to recognise the distinction between *what* reaction there might be, and the chance of such a reaction, and at what doseage.

These things are additives that have been tested and approved throughout the EU.
I wonder what, for example, the German attitude might be to artificial smoke flavouring? I don't know, and would regard such things with more suspicion than anything that has been EU-wide approved.

[Patricia Thornton]

I agree with Dougal that doseage and reaction are very important factors in this discussion, but I think the important question and one never gets to an answer to is that raised by Jenny's post; why does her nephew react to a certain fizzy drink in the way he does? I do not believe it is necessarily related to E numbers.

My nephew's younger son suffers terribly from various food intolerances; he's 8 years old and I cannot start to remember the huge list of things he can't eat but I do know he has never tasted chocolate, fizzy drinks, nuts and lots of the other things I enjoyed as a child (even with rationing).

This boy, ironically, was born in Japan, the country where MSG (E621), perhaps the most discussed E number, was first discovered in seaweed; a country where people live longer than us in the west, a country where food intolerance is virtually unknown, a country where several types of cancer (until recently) were extremely rare or unknown, a country that (until recently) did not eat dairy products or red meat. Might it not be just as easy to blame the readily availablity of these things for the apparently recent increased incidence of reactions to certain foods as anything else?