Are “natural” food additives safer than “artificial” or “man-made” food additives?
Some additives are manufactured from natural sources such as soybeans and corn, which provide lecithin to maintain product consistency, or beets, which provide beet powder used as food coloring. Other useful additives are not found in nature and must be man-made. Artificial additives can be produced more economically, with greater purity and more consistent quality than some of their natural counterparts. Whether an additive is natural or artificial has no bearing on its safety. All foods, whether picked from your garden or your supermarket shelf, are made up of chemicals. For example, the vitamin C or ascorbic acid found in an orange is identical to that produced in a laboratory. Indeed, all things in the world consist of the chemical building blocks of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and other elements. These elements are combined in various ways to produce starches, proteins, fats, water and vitamins found in foods.
