Additives that don't belong in healthy snacks

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Exotic names are good for dreaming away. However, the ingredient list of a snack should not contain incomprehensible names. Therefore, we give you a brief idea of why it is better to avoid foods with lots of additives.

Food additives are substances that are deliberately added to food. There are several reasons for this, such as to simplify the production process. They are also often added to improve taste or appearance or to make foods last longer. Are all additives bad for us? No, but some vigilance is still in order.

Here are the main food additives and what they are used for:

• Colorings: artificial or natural (i.e. derived from natural products) colorings
• Preservatives: substances to inhibit the development of bacteria, such as sorbic acid.
• Emulsifiers, thickeners and gelling agents: substances that make the product firmer or improve its texture. A well-known example is lecithin.
• Flavor enhancers and artificial flavors: substances to enhance or modify the taste. Well-known examples are glutamates.
• Sweeteners: artificial sweeteners used to replace sugar in light products, such as aspartame or saccharin.

When a food product contains additives, this must be clearly stated on the label. You can usually recognize them by a code beginning with an E followed by a number of digits. Sometimes they are listed on the label by name rather than the code.

But beware! Not all E numbers or additives are necessarily bad for us, for example, you can find vitamin C under E300.

Although additives are regulated and food manufacturers are allowed to add them to their products, this does not mean that all additives are healthy for you, on the contrary. Moreover, they often have no nutritional value and bring nothing useful to your body. Sometimes they are even added to avoid the use of more expensive (and usually true, pure) food ingredients.

In a healthy diet, it is important anyway to choose foods that are as pure and unprocessed as possible. A simple rule is actually the more processed a food or snack is, the more additives it will contain. E-numbers are fortunately best noticed in an ingredient list. Unsure if an E-number is ok? Just ask google, that way you can be sure what you're dealing with.

But a good guideline is that if you have to wrestle yourself through a whole laundry list of incomprehensible names on the label, you better choose a healthier alternative with pure ingredients. Because some additives really aren't good for us.