Perspective, April 2014.
In England, the E-number system was introduced in the 1960s to reassure consumers that permitted additives were safe. More recently, however, consumers have become suspicious of such numbers, and many of these E-numbers have been replaced by the additive names. Even better, there is a trend to use actual food extracts in an effort to create a “cleaner label.”
QUOTE: “Specifically, the colours used in the Southampton study on the impact of food colours on hyperactivity in children have largely been replaced by colouring foodstuffs, and the preservative used in the study, sodium benzoate, has been replaced by potassium sorbate in the majority of soft drinks.”
While the Southampton study only addressed six artificial food dyes, ALL the dyes have been implicated by association and the industry has been replacing them all with food extracts. Unfortunately, aspartame is still the most used artificial sweetener, while stevia is the least, but at least the UK appears to be making progress towards safer foods, unlike us here in the USA.
