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Most of us are familiar with what food additives are, seeing them on the back of food labels in the supermarkets and even reading about them in news articles. Many may not know, however, that in the background, there’s a constant effort being made to identify any health risks and develop safe limits for the use of additives in foods and beverages.

We all enjoy the occasional piece of cake or chocolate. Emulsifiers play a big role in reducing and removing trans fats, but how can this be achieved without compromising on taste and quality?

There’s currently no official or widely accepted definition of a ‘sustainable emulsifier’. And, in fact, there may never be one. There is, however, a clearly documentable difference between those that are based on sustainably sourced ingredients and which are produced via sustainable production processes, and those that are not. It’s largely a question of degree.

A new publication authored by researchers at the US Food and Drug Association (FDA) concludes ”….our updated dietary exposure estimates for these seven emulsifiers, did not raise safety concerns at the current specified levels of use.”

It’s no secret that our company has been pushing for food manufacturers to adopt sustainable emulsifiers for their ingredient lists for some years now. We’ve certainly put a lot of investment into this direction, but there’s still a large part of the global market (most of it, in fact) that has yet to really jump on the sustainable ingredients train.

Just how safe is your food product’s plastic packaging? It’s a topic of concern for both manufacturers and consumers, spurred on by media coverage of potentially harmful additives, such as biphenol A in polycarbonate beverage bottles. And many other petrochemical additives currently in use for a variety of functional packaging needs are likely to present vulnerable targets for consumer and regulatory backlash.

What exactly is an emulsifier and what does it do – and how can the ability to mix oil and water help solve some of the world’s food and non-food challenges? In this video, I demonstrate the use of emulsifiers and investigate their future.

Have you ever wondered why emulsifiers are used in industrial production of chocolate and confectionery products? My name is Jørgen Holdgaard and I’ve been working with chocolate and confectionery emulsifiers for more than 25 years and I’ll be happy to show you in this video.