In April, with the warm东风 (east wind) blowing and grass growing while orioles fly in the southern part of the country, including in the Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture and Yongzhou areas, ice cream is once again taking center stage. Major malls have placed their sweet treats and snacks, which were quiet during the winter, at the most eye-catching customer exits. The food lovers are already out in full force across the city searching for the latest ice cream flavors.
Ice cream is truly the "beauty" of the snack world, combining color, aroma, and taste, making it very popular. However, many people are also aware of its downsides: those with poor digestive systems may suffer from gastroenteritis or diarrhea after consuming it; ice cream has a high calorie count, and eating too much can easily lead to weight gain, etc. Today, I want to talk about another issue with ice cream: additives.
To achieve a complete combination of color, aroma, and taste, manufacturers often need to use food additives to help shape the ice cream. These additives mainly include emulsifiers and thickeners. In general, these additives won't cause significant harm to the body, but if they exceed the standard limits, they could lead to serious consequences.
Some ice creams contain nearly 20 different types of additives.
Recently, reporters visited several shops in the new district and found that the ice cream counters had a wide variety of brands, with flavors such as chocolate, vanilla, mango, and green tea. Carefully checking the outer packaging revealed that almost every flavor of popsicle and ice cream had a long list of ingredients, with fewer having over twenty ingredients and some even up to forty. Notably, almost every popsicle contained food additives, with fewer containing seven or eight kinds and more containing close to twenty kinds.
For example, Yili's red date flavored popsicle lists the following on its ingredient table: drinking water, white sugar, maltose, edible vegetable oil, whole milk powder, red date chunks, maltodextrin, whey powder, red date juice, eggs, honey, red date powder, and food additives including glycerol monostearate, Tween 80, sodium carboxymethyl cellulose, locust bean gum, xanthan gum, carrageenan, citric acid, caramel color, erythrosine, among nine other substances that are difficult to understand. Unilever's Chocolate Magnum contains even more additives—16 in total, including emulsifiers, thickeners, flavorings, soy lecithin, sunset yellow, tartrazine, cochineal red, erythrosine, amaranth, brilliant blue, beta-carotene, caramel color, annatto orange, beetroot red, etc.
In one snack shop, reporters noticed that some popsicles' packaging descriptions of additives were quite vague, mostly using phrases like "and other additives."
The fragrance of an ice cream flavored with "purple yam aromatic oil"
What exactly do these additives do?
A tester specializing in food inspection in Qingyuan City explained that food colorants like sunset yellow and cochineal red are used to "dress up" the ice cream, and most ice creams contain them. For instance, there is a popsicle on the market called "Green Tongue," shaped like a green tongue, which dyes the consumer's tongue green after eating it. Adding food colorants is an indispensable step in the process of "dressing up" ice cream. During ice cream production, manufacturers need to use food additives to help form the ice cream, with these additives primarily including emulsifiers and thickeners.
At a store in Lianzhou that specializes in selling food additives needed for cold drinks, cakes, and pastries, the store owner revealed that a single can of "purple yam aromatic oil" can be used to make purple yam flavored ice cream. This additive costs 48 yuan per can, and according to the seller, adding just a bit to the ice cream gives it a purple yam flavor and mimics the color of purple yam. The ingredient label on this "purple yam aromatic oil" states: propylene glycol, sorbitol, purple yam flavoring, brilliant blue, amaranth, citric acid, potassium sorbate, with applications ranging from pastries, candies, cookie fillings, and jellies, with a dosage range of 0.1% to 1%.
For this, reporters consulted industry experts. According to the expert, according to national food additive standards, propylene glycol cannot be used in jelly or frozen products. Additionally, potassium sorbate can be used in popsicles and flavored ice but not in ice cream, meaning that if you're making ice cream, neither propylene glycol nor potassium sorbate should be added.
Regarding the "unintelligible" additives in ice cream, citizens expressed confusion. "Anyway, I'll try to eat less," said Taotao, who is currently dieting. She used to love eating ice cream, sometimes consuming a box of popsicles daily to satisfy her cravings. Later, she discovered it made her feel nauseous, "I vomited for a few days and then quit." Taotao suspected that a certain component in the ice cream caused the vomiting, "After quitting, the symptoms disappeared."
Additives within safe limits are safe to consume
Responsible parties from well-known domestic ice cream manufacturing companies have explained the issue of ice cream additives. According to them, very little food additive is actually added to ice cream, but the state’s issued "Regulations on the Production Supervision and Management of Food Additives" requires clear labeling of food additives in all produced foods. Therefore, previous names for thickening agents, food colorants, and flavorings in popsicles have been replaced with specific applied ingredients. Even if the additive is present in milligram amounts, it must still be noted on the label, hence the appearance of up to a dozen different food additives.
According to food safety regulations...
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