Memo: EU Food Additives: making our food safer

Additives are substances used for a variety of reasons - such as preservation, colouring, sweetening, etc. - during the preparation of food. EU legislation defines them as "any substance not normally consumed as a food in itself and not normally used as a characteristic ingredient of food, whether or not it has nutritive value, the intentional addition of which to food for a technological purpose in the manufacture, processing, preparation, treatment, packaging, transport or storage of such food results, or may be reasonably expected to result, in it or its by-products becoming directly or indirectly a component of such foods."