Food additive and food safety

The research and application of food additive is one of the important indices indicating the development level of national food science and technology and economy. There will be no modern food industry without food additive. Using food additive legally and fairly is necessary to maintain food safety. So far, there is no food safety event of major hazards resulted from legal and fair use of food additives. However, food additive has become the scapegoat of many food safety events at present. In this review, the importance of food additives, the role of food additive played in maintaining food safety, the main problems existed in food additive application, and supervision of food additive were introduced. The reasons that lead to misunderstanding of food additives by public were analyzed to guide the people to understand the relationship between food additive and food safety correctly, and promote sound development of food additive and food industry in China.