China Food Additives Debate: A Key Summary
- Demand for clean‑label and zero‑additives is widening the gap between consumer perceptions and scientific evidence on safe food additive use
- Restrictive additive regulations are slowing innovation
- China currently permits over 2,300 additives, but past scandals continue to shape consumer distrust.
- Experts argue for science‑based evaluation of additives and call out inaccurate or fear‑driven claims that hinder industry development.
- The core issue is manufacturer discipline, with food safety risks arising from profit‑driven misuse rather than approved additives.
One of the most resounding food retail and marketing drivers in China today similar to many markets worldwide is cleaner labels, particularly when items claim to be additive-free or 100% natural.
However, food science experts in this market believe that there currently exists a very large gap between consumer understanding of additives and scientific data, which is only being expanded further by the clean label, zero-additive narrative.
“We have to acknowledge that additives have been part of China’s food industry for thousands of years even if the term for them was not coined until the 1970s — without the use of ingredients such as salt and calcium sulphate/gypsum, the food sector and indeed the economy would not be where it is today,” Professor Sun Baoguo, food science professor and China’s only food science academician in government science consultancy body Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) told the floor at the recent Food Ingredients China (FIC) event in Shanghai, China.
“Unfortunately as our food industry grows, so are public misunderstandings about additives and this is starting to cause a delay in the advancement of the processed foods industry. The fact is that proper food additives are actually good, not bad — what is bad can only be human error and lack of discipline in its usage, which should not be blamed on the additives or the processed foods.”
He highlighted several examples of current food additive regulations that are causing industry development to stagnate both in terms of quality and market expansion.
“Chocolates are a very good example — no one can deny that European chocolates are better than local ones here, but why is this so? There are many reasons including different ingredient sources of course, but in fact one very major reason for this is that they have many more additive options compared to us here enabling faster and better innovation of chocolate products,” he said.
“Another clear case study where our own laws are restricting growth is in infant formula, where technically we already have many brands producing products proven to be very high quality and providing strong benefits to local babies, but because our local additive standards are so different from overseas ones, we are unable to sell these in many export markets even if we know we have a better product.”
Despite the current raging demand for cleaner labels and all-natural claims, Prof Sun stressed that this is not going to stop wider industry usage of food additives any time soon.
“It is not possible to stop the growth of food additives in China or the global market. The food industry will need them for as long as processed foods are in demand, and many value-added foods and beverages will need to be processed somehow in order to add that value so processing is not going anywhere,” he added.
“We do see a likely growth in the use of natural additives given this current demand for natural, but all forms of additives will continue to be crucial as long as foods such as packaged drinks or ice cream are still around.”
Scandal phobia
There are over 2,300 types of food additives in China currently, and there can also be no doubt that the country has suffered from multiple food safety scandals linked to errant additive use in the past.
Case in point include the infamous milk scandal in 2008 where milk products were adulterated with kidney-harming melamine to increase apparent protein content; as well as a 2022 case of pork soaked in sodium nitrite and coloured with erythrosine to be sold as cured beef that saw nitrite levels surpass permitted standards by seven times.
Although there has been significantly stricter monitoring and penalties for such offences in the past few years, such incidents have left a lingering fear in both local and global consumers when ‘China’ and ‘additives’ are linked together.
Prof Sun acknowledged this situation but still called for food additives to be treated more neutrally moving forward.
“The use of food additives and the processed foods that incorporate these should be assessed objectively, and it is critical to ensure that everything is done according to legal standards and requirements, but blanket negative remarks or criticisms are usually not based in science but rather a lack of understanding or for different ulterior motives,” he said.
“Don’t get me wrong, we must strictly and swiftly remove all illegal and excessive usage of additives in food – but the same should also be done for these ill-willed negative remarks.”
The key to resolving the whole issue is discipline, which must be instilled into all food manufacturers.
“To make the use of food additives normalised and not demonised, the answer is not to just go all out ‘No Additives’, but rather to understand the importance of using a few crucial items to ensure food product safety and quality are maintained,” he stressed.
“Adding to this is the human aspect, where the food manufacturers involved all need to have discipline when using additives in processed foods, as so far most of the issues we have faced in this area have been a lack of discipline when weighing up profits versus basic food safety — This is what really needs to change.”
