Controversies Regarding Food Additives and Future Trends

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Nowadays food additives are far more than just salt, vinegar, herbs and spices. These compounds are essential to preserve and enhance the original characteristics of foods in order to make them more appealing, nutritious, safe, convenient and affordable. They also have an outstanding role in the production of greater quantities of food with high- quality standards and in the obtainment of food to promote well-being and health. This chapter focuses on the main controversies of food additives, namely the duality between natural and synthetic antioxidants and provides insight into their future trends. Although natural additives are generally preferred, they can also present drawbacks such as low availability, high price, low potency, low food compatibility and difficulty to predict the effect due to their multiple activities. In fact, new food processing technologies are expected to slow down food additives use, but, on the other hand, new additives, will replace the current ones in order to improve the characteristics of foods, increase food safety and improve the health and well-being of consumers.