This article provides an overview on how to gather insights about food additives
Food Additives regulations are part of the database for the markets covered, which is a list constantly evolving, at the current time there are over 160 markets and international organizations being part of the database, if you’d like to see a map that illustrates the actual coverage you can use the Explore -> Discover Posts page, where you can either see a world map or click on the chart view to browse contents with a navigation bar.
Food additives are chemicals added to foods to keep them fresh or to enhance their color, flavor, or texture. They may include food colorings (such as tartrazine or cochineal), flavor enhancers (such as MSG), or a range of preservatives.
Most food additives are regulated in their usage limit by different product categories and should be listed on the product label, along with other ingredients, in descending order by weight (flavors are often an exception). Sometimes, the additive is spelled out in full. At other times, it is represented by a code number: for example, cochineal may be listed as Colouring (120); sodium sulphite may be shown as a Preservative (221).
Note: spelling forms - sulphite or sulfite, depend on the originating document and the spelling rules within a certain market. Digicomply supports these forms within the ontology - product, and substance hierarchies, that enhance the search items recognition. See more articles that explain ontology in use here.
Useful to know is that the topic under which additives, colorant, enzymes are classified is Additives, nutrition and organic foods, therefore it can be used in the above-mentioned screen, but you can use the same when you setup your own personal feed (available to ADVANCED, PRO and ULTIMATE edition) to monitor new contents or when you perform a search (available to ADVANCED and PRO edition).
Sample Feed for Food Additives
For the PRO and ULTIMATE users, the Restricted Substances database offers a specific interaction to search for food additives limits, where you can search for a specific substance or product category across multiple countries. To learn more about the Restricted Substances database in SGS DIGICOMPLY, you can read these resources:
Introduction to Restricted substances - how to
How to search for food additives
IMPORTANT NOTE ON PRODUCTS CATEGORIES
Regulations often use different names or groupings of products to describe the same product. For example, Codex defines the limits of pesticides residues on 'Pome Fruit' which includes 'Apple', while the United States defines the limit for specific for 'Apple', therefore when you perform a search, we recommend to check the relations available for that term in order to understand the different potential association used to describe a product or commodity.