This summer, BBC television screened a series of programmes in the UK focusing on food additives and E numbers. I was expecting the usual re-hash of threadbare and largely anecdotal evidence in support of a resolutely anti-additive stance, but was pleasantly surprised to find myself watching an entertaining and generally fair-minded explanation of what additives do, where they come from and why they are present in so many processed foods. The opening sequences were not promising, featuring interviews with several customers in a supermarket voicing predictable comments about E numbers. “They aren’t natural” and “I try to avoid them as much as possible,” being typical. But the series then took on the task of challenging those prejudices and did a pretty good job on the whole.

The three one-hour programmes focused on colours, preservatives, emulsifiers and stabilisers in turn, and despite some demonstrations chosen for visual impact rather than clarity, a good deal of important information was successfully communicated without losing sight of the need to entertain. The presenter was engaging, amusing and genuinely curious about his subject and the ‘experts’ wheeled on at regular intervals were mostly well chosen and enthusiastic in their desire to explain the science behind food additives to the TV audience. It was encouraging to see the series repeatedly demonstrate that there is nothing unnatural about many of the food additives denoted by E numbers on food labels. A large proportion are, or can be, derived from natural sources, with relatively few being compounds that don’t occur in nature. The point was most memorably, if rather unpleasantly, made as the presenter attempted to extract several food additives from his own body. He then used these to prepare a cake, although I don’t recall him eating any of it.

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that one albeit helpful TV series will change what has become a widely held view among European consumers that food additives are undesirable in the products that they buy. This attitude is driving moves towards ‘clean labelling’ of processed foods and the replacement of perfectly serviceable and safe food additives with ‘natural’ and ‘nature-identical’ alternatives. The word natural, despite the fact that it is rather difficult to define, clearly has broad appeal. This is odd when one considers that some of the most dangerous and toxic compounds known are genuinely natural – botulinum toxin to name but one. Nevertheless, many food manufacturers and retailers have been forced to accept that consumers don’t like synthetic additives and are rapidly reformulating products to exclude as many of them as possible. This trend is substantiated by a new report from Leatherhead Food Research in the UK, which estimates that the market for natural and nature identical colours in Western Europe has grown by 7.5% since 2005 and is now worth approximately e130 million. Although synthetic colours still account for more than half of the market, sales have been declining by 2% every year. The report also flags up the growing demand for ‘colouring foodstuffs’, which can be labelled as ingredients without quoting an E number, and predicts that these will provide strong competition for natural colours. The trend is clearly towards product formulations designed to minimise the need for chemical names and E numbers to appear on labels.

It would be foolish for any food business to ignore the clearly expressed preferences and desires of its customers. But what if those preferences and desires are driven mainly by ignorance and suspicion? Is it better to just accept the situation and supply the market with the products it wants, or should some attempt be made to inform and educate? If this seems like a redundant question, consider the fact that many natural additives don’t yet perform as well as their synthetic alternatives. This really matters in foods that depend on preservatives and other additives functioning appropriately as food safety hurdles. The recent BBC series demonstrated that it is possible to take the fear out of additives and explain their purpose without blinding the viewer with science. This is an important message, not just for the consumer, but for industry too.