It is not difficult for people who cook regularly to find that sometimes salt becomes lumpy after moisture. When using lumpy table salt, the dish is salty without paying attention. To avoid salt clumping, producers often add anti-caking agents to it. However, there are claims that anti-caking agents are harmful to health, and some people even smell "anti-caking agents" discoloration. So, what is an anti-caking agent? Are anti-caking agents really that scary?
On December 31, 2016, citizens purchased salt at a supermarket in Haizhou District, Lianyungang City, Jiangsu Province.
(Geng Yuhe/People's Photo)
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In life, common salt anti-caking agents include potassium ferrocyanide, ferric ammonium citrate, silicon dioxide and calcium silicate, but potassium ferrocyanide is currently used the most. Potassium ferrocyanide, commonly known as yellow blood potassium, yellow blood salt, is a light yellow crystalline granule, which is added to the salt as an anti-caking agent, the role is mainly to prevent salt from clumping, easy to use.
In fact, adding a certain amount of potassium ferrocyanide to table salt as an anti-caking agent is permissible and safe.
First, potassium ferrocyanide in table salt is not the same chemical as highly toxic "cyanide." The message circulating online is that the two substances are conflated. Zhong Kai, deputy director of the Science and Technology Food and Nutrition Information Exchange Center and an expert of the China Food Safety 30 Forum, introduced that its chemical structure is completely different from potassium cyanide, which can poison people, and its acute toxicity is lower than that of table salt.
Secondly, potassium ferrocyanide has stable chemical properties and is resistant to high temperatures, and will decompose at high temperatures above 400 ° C. When cooking in normal times, the cooking temperature is far less than 400 ° C, so the potassium ferrocyanide in table salt will not decompose toxic substances when cooking, and will not pose a threat to human health.
In addition, according to the assessment data of the World Health Organization and the International FAO Committee of Experts, the lifetime safe dose of potassium ferrocyanide is 0.025 mg per kilogram of body weight. To the extent that it affects physical health, it is equivalent to eating 150 to 250 grams of table salt per day. For ordinary people, even the amount of salt that "mouth weight" people have throughout the day is only about 20 grams at most. (Xie Long)
This article was scientifically checked by Ruan Guangfeng, director of the business department of Kexin Food and Nutrition Information Exchange Center.
