Food additives and cancer.

Food additives have been in use since prehistoric times. Early additives included salt, honey, wine and spices, all used largely for preservative or flavouring purposes. Later methods of preserving food included salting and smoke-curing of meats to enable an all round year's supply. In recent times there has been a considerable increase in the number and nature of additives available; they are used for many purposes and in the long run permit reduced food wastage, better food production and distribution throughout the world and the use of convenience foods in an urbanized community. The use of food additives is governed by certain principles, namely that they should be technologically effective, safe-in-use, not be used in any greater quantities than is necessary, not be used with the intention of misleading the consumer as to the nature or quality of the food and that the use of non-nutrient additives be kept to a minimum. The assessment of safety-in-use of food additives covers many aspects including prevention of the consumer from exposure to carcinogens. Cancer is not a rare disease but a common one; neither is it new but has been recognized since antiquity. But cancer in the industrialized world today is found to be occurring in organs which in the past were neither previously associated with cancer nor are those in which cancer is now found to be occurring in the less well-developed nations. Thus, there is an indication of the association of some cancers with the changing environment and it has been suggested that this may include the increased use of food additives. However, the consumer should not ignore the fact that if the use of food additives ceased many other natural substances possessing possible carcinogenic activity would continue to be ingested. The risk of carcinogenicity associated with recently approved food additives is very much lower than that from those in use for longer than approximately 30 years. The reason for this is that all recently approved additives must have shown adequate evidence of a lack of carcinogenicity in animal experiments whereas substances used for many years have only recently (the last decade or two) been subjected to carcinogenicity tests considered to be of adequate design. The coal tar dyes are a good example of this. Their use as food colours began in 1856; they were brighter and more concentrated than the natural colourings used until then. However, as more and …