Food Additives and Ingredients Association FAIA

Part of Additives and Ingredients for Healthy Living

About In the Mix

How Nutrition Works

Natural and Chemical

Why Ingredients Work

Chemist in the Kitchen

Stabilisers & Thickeners

Added But Not Modified

Nature's Poison Chest

Anticaking Agents

GOING WITH THE FLOW

Domestically, we expect substances like sugar, salt and parmesan cheese to flow smoothly. In bulk food processing good flow properties are even more important.

EMULSIFIERS

We all love smooth foods and they get that way through the use of Emulsifiers.

STABILISERS AND THICKENERS

Texture - important both for the feel of food and its digestion - is maintained by thickening and stabilising agents.

The substances that keep food flowing

The physical properties of food; how it handles; are increasingly important in the world of fast food. Vending machines, non-dairy creamers, toppings like parmesan cheese, all need to flow freely and not to agglomerate. Left to themselves, many foods tend to coagulate and specific agents are needed to prevent this.

Many anti-caking agents are natural products such as talc (E533b) and bentonite (E558), and some are manufactured, such as silicon dioxide (E551) (chemically the same as sand but much purer), calcium silicate (E552) and sodium aluminosilicate (E554). Anticaking agents are physical rather than chemical agents and as such are bland and harmless.

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