that should be followed for food to remain healthy and nutritious and the importance of spreading awareness about food adulteration are discussed. The next chapter presents various facts about additives and preservatives used in food processing and preservation, and their health implications. For example, the effect of additives on the population, especially children, as consumption of additives is related to hyperactivity and hypersensitivity. Synthetic additives should especially be avoided due to their potential toxic effect.
The third chapter includes the zealous objective to elevate sustainability or recyclability of plastic packaging via enhanced recovery and the choice of packaging design that takes its end of life into consideration. Progress toward the efficacy of packaging materials can also enhance the removal of food pathogens and alleviate environmental waste by maintaining food quality. Because laws regulating food additives are extremely important for safe use and application, the national and international laws associated with food additives used in the food industry are highlighted in the fourth chapter.
Since screening and detecting adulterants in food commodities is a step that ensures the quality of the product, the fifth chapter highlights detection techniques such as physical, chemical, analytical, and immuno-based techniques. The objective of the sixth chapter is to identify common cases of food adulteration malpractice in developing countries. A preventive and remedial approach to counter food adulteration by evaluating existing laws and technology and looking for gaps in the law is discussed.
Food adulteration, why it is done, and its effect on human health and balanced nutrition are covered in the seventh chapter. Regulations that severely punish illegal traders and dishonest producers that adulterate different food products in various ways should be enforced. Next, the eighth chapter attempts to elucidate different types of antinutrients, their structures and adverse effects, as well as strategies for reducing their levels to improve the quality of food. Also discussed is the extensive research on strategies to reduce the levels of anti-nutritional factors (ANFs) in foods, which is essential to produce foods with few or no ANFs without altering their nutritional or organoleptic value. The ninth chapter is a detailed discussion of the challenges and constraints in future food security. Green technologies and associated research trends in food processing are covered, with a major focus on topics like the search for alternative protein sources, novel technologies in food processing, nutrigenomics, biomimicry, DNA barcoding, lab-on-chip, and nanosensors in food safety technology as remedial solutions and associated regulations in attaining a future sustainable food supply.
Alternative food preservation technologies are advantageous over conventional technologies for beverages and solid foods as they can retain nutritional qualities, sensory attributes, lower the chances of crosscontamination, and increase shelf life. The tenth chapter discusses these alternative food preservation techniques for extending and improving the shelf life of food products with shorter treatment duration and higher product safety. The next chapter discusses the tractability of natural deep eutectic solvents (NADES) in relation to environmental impact, stability, solute recovery, and toxicity, taking into consideration the costs.
The twelfth chapter provides a succinct overview of various conventional food additives and preservatives with a major emphasis on their type, functionality, mode of action, and significance for food applications. Furthermore, it stipulates various technological advancements made over the years with novel alternative ingredients and discusses the opportunities shaped by the advent of technologies like nanoencapsulation. The last chapter discusses the broader concept of using nondestructive methods in quality assessment of food products and their applications for food evaluation and quality. The overall quality measurement in the food industry is attributed to the sensor fusion technique, which is a collaborative multi-sensor approach to enhance the quality assessment of agro-food products. These methods, which help to ensure customer satisfaction of products by providing good quality products without rupturing the food product, are discussed in this chapter.
In conclusion, I am very grateful for all the hard work and efforts of the many contributors to this book. I would like to thank all the authors for sharing their insightful research and information with us. I am also very much thankful to Aarushi Sen for her unending encouragement and support throughout the creation of this book. Her help was much appreciated. I am also most grateful for the efforts put in by Martin Scrivener of Scrivener Publishing, whose help made this book possible. I thank him for his patience and consistent support throughout the journey. Finally, I express my sincere thanks to the Department of Chemistry, Amity University, Uttar Pradesh for all the help and support I have received.
Dr. Mousumi Sen
October 2021
1
Food Chemistry: Role of Additives, Preservatives, and Adulteration
Mousumi Sen
Amity Institute of Applied Sciences, Department of Chemistry, Amity University, Uttar Pradesh, India
Abstract
Food is one of the most important substances for survival, it contains all the components that are required for nutrition to maintain a healthy life. Nowadays, due to tremendous advancement, synthetic and natural supplements are added to food items and beverages in huge amount. The synthetic or artificial colors need a strong accreditation from the administrative bodies for their consumption [1–4].
When color preservatives overshoot the sanctioned limit it gradually causes hyperactivity in children. It is mandatory to oversee food quality and the supplements being added to the food for consumption. Also, natural color is rapidly being replaced with artificial or synthetic colors [5].
It is very crucial and critical to understand the effects of each preservation methods and their handling procedure on various foods because each step of storage, handling, processing, and distribution affects the various characteristics of food which could be desirable/undesirable.
Adulteration of food is a demonstration of deliberately corrupting the nature of nourishment offered available to be purchased either by the admixture or substitution of second rate substances and which antagonistically influence nature of food sources, yet in addition their coincidental pollution during the time of development, reaping, capacity, preparing, transport, and dispersion [6–8].
Keywords: Synthetic and natural supplements, artificial colors, food colors, chemical food preservation, sophisticated techniques, adulteration of food, health hazards, pollution
1.1 Introduction
Food colors are basically the supplements that are called as pigments or dyes. When these supplements are added to the food, these improve color of the eatables. These type of color supplements are basically increased within the food just to overcome the color loss that is caused due to the prolong storage conditions. These additives also provide color to the colorless food that makes them more attractive [9]. Food colorants are being added to food in one or another form since many years. Food color plays an eminent role in today’s scenario.
Colorant are different from one another on the basis of their chemical properties and physical properties such as structure, sources, and usage purpose. Colorants are usually added to processed food such as candies, snacks, margarine, cheese, soft drinks, jam/jelly, gelatin, pudding, and pastry fillings [10, 14]. It is known that in medieval ages nitrate was used to enhance the color of meat and to prevent botulism apart from salt and smoke that were used as preservatives.
Food colorants were used by Egyptians in 400 BC to regulate
