No matter how serious the social fear is, it can't stop the takeaway star from picking up the mobile phone and urging the rider to "How long will it take for my takeaway to be delivered?" ”。
Nowadays, eating takeaway has become a norm, according to CCTV Finance, by the end of 2020, the overall order volume of takeaway in the country reached 17.12 billion, and the user scale was close to 500 million people.
Among them, the post-80s and post-90s have become the backbone of takeaway consumption, and in addition to three meals a day, afternoon tea and supper have become the new favorites of takeaway consumption.
What does a person eat takeout throughout the day?
Young people might say that they eat delicious, happy, calories...
Parents may say that eating gutter oil, cooking bags, bacteria that exceed the standard...
But the substances in this kind of takeaway that we are going to talk about today are not the above.
Although the content of this substance in food is not much, and it is generally a safe dose, it is why it is ignored.
This substance is the edible flavor.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="20" > know flavors</h1>
Where the fragrance is hidden
Edible flavors, also known as food flavors, are concentrated blends of food spices and flavor excipients (mostly chemical components) used to play a role in flavoring.
It is generally not used for direct consumption, but is mostly used for food processing [1].
In fact, not only convenience foods, takeaways, restaurants, and restaurants may be eaten with flavors.
It's just that the takeaway is a form of home delivery, which closes the distance between us and the "restaurant", and we can enjoy the food a few kilometers away without leaving home, which is convenient and fast, which directly leads to many people dealing with flavors three times a day.
Enter the supermarket, you will find that in fact, whether it is a snack or a frozen food, whether it is dairy products or ordinary drinks, wine, most of them as long as you carefully look at the ingredient list, there will be four words of edible flavor or other words representing flavor.
In other words, flavor has become the "soul" of the modern food industry and is widely used in all fields of food production.
It has to be admitted that the emergence and application of edible flavors has indeed promoted the rapid development of the food industry.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="203" > the role of flavor</h1>
Although, the use of flavors in food is very small.
However, the role of flavors in food is very important!
01 Give food a variety of aromas
With flavor, chicken and duck meat can be made into the taste of beef and mutton, boiled fragrant bone soup can not put any bones, netizens ridiculed "production of only one cow a year" noodles can also be full of meat, monotonous potato chips can eat meat, fruity and even flowery taste...
02 Improve and correct the taste of food
Edible flavor can mask the bad smell of food, optimize the appearance of food, and promote appetite.
This is also why many people feel that the color, aroma and taste of the food at home cannot catch up with the food in the restaurant. Even if you try to make many dishes at home countless times, you can't always compare with the reasons outside.
03 Sterilization, antioxidant
Edible flavor has a bactericidal and antioxidant effect, which can extend the shelf life of food. Many unique smelling spice plant volatile oils contain a variety of active ingredients, which have a good antibacterial and antiseptic effect.
04 Reduce costs
In the processing of meat products, in order to ensure the shelf life of the product, the sterilization intensity of the food will usually increase, but the meat aroma will weaken. At this time, many manufacturers will choose to add meat flavor, which can ensure the flavor of the product and reduce costs.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="204" > the risk of flavors</h1>
The composition of edible flavors is complex
The composition of flavors is very complex, although natural flavors have the word "natural", but "natural" refers only to the source, essentially chemicals. Therefore, whether it is a natural flavor or a synthetic fragrance, it is difficult to ensure safety.
The picture below is a commonly used "one drop of incense" on the market, don't look at the ingredient list on two things, in fact, in its main ingredients contain more than ten types of chemicals (more than 50 kinds after subdivision) [3].
Figure A brand of "a drop of incense" main ingredient test results
Potential toxicity of edible flavors
Studies have always confirmed that excessive intake of food flavor may lead to the accumulation of toxic and harmful substances in the human body. After a long period of accumulation, the potential carcinogenicity and reproductive toxicity of some substances will be revealed.
Moreover, these harms are more pronounced in children and adolescents.
The U.S. Annual Report on Children's Science studies show that excessive intake of flavors and fragrances can increase the burden on the kidneys and damage the development of organs.
Infants and young children eating milk powder containing flavors and fragrances is easy to inhibit digestion and absorption, affect the normal development of the body, and easily form dependence, resulting in different degrees of partial food after children grow up.
Toxic and harmful substances in edible flavors are difficult to avoid
The appearance of toxic and harmful substances in flavors and fragrances will probably go through the following three ways.
01 Many flavors and fragrances themselves have many toxic and harmful substances in their own ingredients or raw materials.
Example: safrole Coumarin
These high-risk ingredients, which naturally exist in the raw materials for the production of fragrances, are difficult to be separated due to their low content, which leads to some flavors, which are "poisonous" at birth.
02 In the preparation process of flavors and fragrances, a lot of toxic and harmful substances are produced.
For example: 3-MCPD ester, acrylamide
03 In the storage and transportation of edible flavors, many harmful and toxic substances will also be produced.
Examples: phthalates, microorganisms
All in all, the long-term accumulation of flavors may increase your probability of chronic poisoning, cancer, and impaired organ function.
Although the example of harmful substances in flavors will directly make people feel that they are eating according to the list of carcinogens. However, it is worth affirming that a small amount of food flavor (occasionally eating foods containing flavor) will not endanger the health of the body.
After all, many regulations on flavors have been formulated at home and abroad, and compliant foods will also add flavors in accordance with national standards.
And fragrances have always been considered to have "self-limiting" properties.
Because the fragrance is a high-power concentrated flavoring agent, if the hand shakes and adds more food, it will be unbearable.
But it is precisely because of the above conditions for shelter that the fragrance will gradually evolve from a food "helper" to a "murderer".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="206" >how we are "poisoned" by flavors? </h1>
01 Controlled, but not fully controlled
Although there are standards and regulations for edible flavors, in addition to the regulations and standards, there are still cases where flavors are not used correctly, and even if you can manage how much you want to eat, you can't control how much you want to eat.
You only need to enter the words such as edible flavor, meat flavor flavor, and a drop of incense on the online shopping platform to buy "the secret of hot business", "three minutes of fast soup" and "rich bone flavor".
This means that the amount of flavor added to a certain extent is not the standard decision, but the person in charge of the spoon.
In this era when the threshold for consumer taste bud recognition of fragrance is increasing year by year, when merchants are only concerned with profit, the "self-limiting" attribute of flavor may not be so flexible [3].
Simply put, as we become more and more "heavy on taste", it is likely that only excess flavors can satisfy the taste buds.
02 Every detail is a quantitative change, and the quantitative change will eventually lead to qualitative change
For example, if your day looks like this
Two meals eat a dozen dollars of meat + staple food "fixed format" takeaway, afternoon tea to a cup of XX fruit tea, hungry to the downstairs convenience store to buy potato chips, supper and then a takeaway small barbecue...
Then you are likely to eat flavors all at once, and these individual foods may not add excess flavors, but all the foods added together, do you eat less flavor?
If you maintain this dietary pattern for a long time, will you eat less flavor?
03 Even if the fragrance is not the murderer, it will definitely be an accomplice
Not many people can refuse good food, and flavor is the secret of food.
The more fragrant the food, the greater the probability of eating more, and the consequence of eating too much is: fat!
If you are accustomed to eating foods with flavor, you are likely to feel that the food without flavor is dull and tasteless, and unconsciously, flavor dependence will arise. Especially for small children, long-term eating sweet snacks may develop a bad habit of not loving to eat meals, and over time there will be many nutritional problems.
Not many people are willing to eat fresh, inferior food, so flavor has become the secret of the survival of black-hearted merchants.
Inferior meat pretending to be high-quality meat is camouflaged with flavor, and the unpleasant smell of ingredients is masked by flavor, making us think that every bite is healthy, but in fact, every bite is hurting the body.
Final words
Eating a moderate amount of flavor-containing foods, several times or even short-term will indeed not be too much of a problem, but the toxicity of flavors will eventually appear through long-term accumulation.
With the increasingly fierce competition in the takeaway and catering industries, there is always a reason for price, taste, and convenience to make you put down the stir-fry spoon and choose to fill your stomach with outside food.
When you pick up your phone and order takeout, when you change your shoes and go out to eat, if the reasons of the older generation are not enough to convince you to stop, then avoiding flavor should be a reason for us to convince ourselves.
Find out your favorite takeaway friends around you and forward them to add bricks to their health.
bibliography:
[1] GB 30616-2020 National Standard for Food Safety, Food Flavors
SUN Baoguo. Preparation of meat flavor[J]. Journal of Beijing Institute of Light Industry,1998,16(3)(In Chinese)
LIU Xinyu. Determination of Ethyl Maltol and 1,2-Propanediol content in "One Drop of Incense" and Its Safety Evaluation[D]. Chengdu: Xihua University, 2012
Huang Xuelin, Liu Shujun, Ping Qingjie, Huang Wei. Research progress on safety of flavors and fragrances[J]. Grain, Oil and Food Science and Technology,2013,3(21)
Study on detection method and control strategy of hazard factor 3-chloro-1,2-propanediol ester in beef flavor[D]. Wuxi: Jiangnan University, 2018
[6] JECFA. Safety Evaluation of Certain Food Additives and Containts Prepared by the Fifty-Seventh Meeting of the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Comittee on Food Additives (JECFA), WHO Food Additives Series 48, Genevs, 2002: 401-432.
This article is written by Du Yun
Audit specialists