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. 2020 Mar 4;10(1):3980.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-60948-w.

Food additives: distribution and co-occurrence in 126,000 food products of the French market

Eloi Chazelas  1 , Mélanie Deschasaux  2 , Bernard Srour  2 , Emmanuelle Kesse-Guyot  2 , Chantal Julia  2   3 , Benjamin Alles  2 , Nathalie Druesne-Pecollo  2 , Pilar Galan  2 , Serge Hercberg  2   3 , Paule Latino-Martel  2 , Younes Esseddik  2 , Fabien Szabo  2 , Pierre Slamich  4 , Stephane Gigandet  4 , Mathilde Touvier  2
Affiliations

Food additives: distribution and co-occurrence in 126,000 food products of the French market

Eloi Chazelas et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Background: More than 330 food additives (e.g. artificial sweeteners, emulsifiers, dyes) are authorized in Europe, with a great variability of use across food products.

Objective: The objective of this study was to investigate the distribution and co-occurrence of food additives in a large-scale database of foods and beverages available on the French market.

Design: The open access crowdsourced Open Food Facts database (https://world.openfoodfacts.org/) was used to retrieve the composition of food and beverage products commonly marketed on the French market (n = 126,556), based on the ingredients list. Clustering of food additive variables was used in order to determine groups of additives frequently co-occurring in food products. The clusters were confirmed by network analysis, using the eLasso method.

Results: Fifty-three-point eight percent of food products contained at least 1 food additive and 11.3% at least 5. Food categories most likely to contain food additives (in more than 85% of food items) were artificially sweetened beverages, ice creams, industrial sandwiches, biscuits and cakes. The most frequently used food additives were citric acid, lecithins and modified starches (>10,000 products each). Some food additives with suspected health effects also pertained to the top 50: sodium nitrite, potassium nitrate, carrageenan, monosodium glutamate, sulfite ammonia caramel, acesulfame K, sucralose, (di/tri/poly) phosphates, mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids, potassium sorbate, cochineal, potassium metabisulphite, sodium alginate, and bixin (>800 food products each). We identified 6 clusters of food additives frequently co-occurring in food products.

Conclusions: Food additives are widespread in industrial French products and some clusters of additives frequently co-occurring in food products were identified. These results pave the way to future etiological studies merging composition data to food consumption data to investigate their association with chronic disease risk, in particular potential 'cocktail effects'.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Percentage of food and beverage items by food category in the Open Food Facts database (n = 126,556 products), France 2019*.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Number of food additives per food product, Open Food Facts database (n = 126,556 products), France 2019.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Percentage of food and beverage items containing at least one additive per food category, Open Food Facts database (n = 126,556 products), France 2019.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Number of food products containing each food additive, Open Food Facts database (n = 126,556 products), France 2019.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Dendrogram of food additives frequently co-occurring in food products generated by cluster analysis, Open Food Facts database, France 2019.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Network of food additives frequently co-occurring in food products generated by eLasso method, Open Food Facts database, France 2019.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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