---
title: "Angels and Demons: The Evolution of Food Under Additives"
description: "With over 25,000 food additives worldwide, the dense ingredient lists on products nearly chronicle a century of human taste memory. A viral video blogger's phrase 'all technology and hard work' sparked widespread food safety anxiety, leading to a national debate on additive safety and shaking the market value of major brands like Haitian."
author: "辛夷"
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published: "2022-11-03"
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# Angels and Demons: The Evolution of Food Under Additives

> With over 25,000 food additives worldwide, the dense ingredient lists on products nearly chronicle a century of human taste memory. A viral video blogger's phrase 'all technology and hard work' sparked widespread food safety anxiety, leading to a national debate on additive safety and shaking the market value of major brands like Haitian.

Today, there are over 25,000 types of food additives worldwide, and the dense ingredient lists almost completely record nearly a century of human taste memory. The phrase 'all technology and hard work' (全是科技与狠活) helped video blogger Xin Jifei gain 5 million followers in 30 days and gave the entire internet PTSD. The seemingly rich white soup is made with 'three-flower condensed milk'; gelatin sheets cut into strips, soaked, and sweetened become a bowl of 'generous and nutritious' bird's nest... In Xin Jifei's videos, everything edible can be synthesized with food additives. This undoubtedly struck a chord with the public's deep-rooted and recurring food safety anxiety, sparking a nationwide debate on the safety of food additives. This public opinion storm even indirectly shook the market value of 'soy sauce giant' Haitian Flavoring & Food Co., Ltd., which lost billions. Facing accusations of 'double standards,' Haitian's statement that 'the use and labeling of food additives in all products comply with relevant standards and regulations' clearly failed to quell market anger. The industry inevitably faces a serious question: Can today's Chinese food industry regain the fragile trust of the consumer market?

**01 Ancestral Additives**
When discussing food additives, we must not demonize them. After all, 'ignoring dosage when talking about toxicity is hooliganism,' and humans have been using 'food additives' for thousands of years—for example, salt, which appeared 8,000 years ago. Salt-preserved foods not only taste better but also resist spoilage. Functionally, salt as a 'preservative' might be considered the ancestor of food additives. To coagulate tofu, brine (magnesium chloride) was used as early as the Eastern Han Dynasty. About 900 years later, alum, now criticized for excessive aluminum, joined the Song Dynasty's fried dough stick recipe, which aligns more with modern perceptions of food additives. Looking abroad, the history of food additives is equally long. In 1500 BC, Egyptians used pigments to make attractive candies; in the 4th century BC, wine's red color was mainly manually adjusted. As for chemically synthesized additives, the British extracted a dye pigment—mauveine—from coal tar in the 19th century. Over the next 100 years, food additives began their conquest of the global food industry. Specifically for the Chinese market, before the reform and opening-up, a small amount of MSG, yeast, enzymes, xylitol, and citric acid basically constituted the initial domestic food additive landscape. From the 1980s onward, the rapidly developing commercial society unleashed the productivity of the food industry, and the food additive sector entered a period of explosive growth. In 1996, the state issued GB2760 'Hygienic Standards for Uses of Food Additives,' officially pressing the start button for the widespread application of additives in food processing. By 1999, the number of domestic food additives had soared from dozens before the 1980s to 1,474; by 2021, this number had risen to nearly 2,500, placing China in the first tier of major food additive producers and consumers. Today, there are over 25,000 types of food additives worldwide, and the dense ingredient lists almost completely record nearly a century of human taste memory. So-called deliciousness only tells half the story of the food sector; the other half belongs to the additive testing ground of 'letting chemistry improve life.'

**02 A Billion-Dollar Industry**
Today, China's food industry scale is approaching 300 trillion yuan, steadily growing at about 10% annually. The production volume and industry output value of food additives have grown at roughly the same rate. In 2021, China's food additive industry output exceeded 11.97 million tons, a year-on-year increase of 13.26%, with sales revenue for major product categories reaching 134.1 billion yuan. In the same year, the number of food additive enterprises exceeded 110,000, a year-on-year increase of nearly 80%. Over the past 30 years, the domestic food and food additive industries have been closely linked, mutually reinforcing, and still in a honeymoon period of symbiotic development, highlighting the significance of food additives to food. From a product functionality perspective, food additives that 'enchant' color, aroma, and taste cater to the common denominator of public taste. In the business world, the essence of food additives is to pander to cost reduction and efficiency enhancement. In the contemporary food sector, raw material costs generally account for one-third of total product costs. In the early era of mass production and sales, much of the confidence of food brands in batch production and low-price competition came from food additives. Half a century ago, Lee Kum Kee squeezed out its century-old rival Rong Shen to become the new king of oyster sauce, partly by introducing automated industrial production lines to replace manual labor, accelerating market capture through scale production. Under the technological conditions of the time, mass production and quality were at odds. Rong Shen, which relied on thick firewood and charcoal for slow manual cooking, producing only 2 jin of oyster sauce from 100 jin of oysters, was powerless against Lee Kum Kee, which was aided by caramel, MSG, and potassium sorbate. The profit surplus from 'low quality, high output' also strongly fed back into the enterprise's construction steps in channels, marketing, product expansion, and reproduction, ultimately helping the brand monopolize the market through scale. Similar cases are numerous. Food additives helped brands quickly expand territory with low quality and low prices, which is no different in crudeness from the internet model of grabbing market share through subsidies and burning money in recent years. The only saving grace is that technology keeps advancing, and the value of food additives is undergoing a transformation.

**03 Angel or Devil**
Regarding food additives, prejudice is farther from truth than ignorance, and comprehensive and objective cognition cannot be established overnight. First, no matter how legitimate the reason seems, it is necessary to confront the negative health impacts of traditional food additives. Law is the bottom line of morality, so national standards are merely a passing grade for food quality. Brands constrained by current survival can temporarily set aside the underlying health controversies of food additives within legal limits and develop tacitly. But blatantly using 'legal additives' as a shield for low quality is simply either stupid or evil. Many industry players have already thought of creating high-quality and differentiated products by setting local, industry, or enterprise standards that are generally higher than national standards. Even if some insiders question whether giant enterprises are engaging in rent-seeking, overall, the pursuit of quality and standards is conceptually commendable. Standards, after all, have levels.

Second, be wary of pseudo-health marketing that uses the banner of 'zero additives' to cover up. Many brands tout 'handcrafted' or 'ancient methods' to promote natural and harmless products, but in reality, they sell illegal products that haven't even done basic sterilization. Blindly rejecting food industry technology is another form of anti-intellectualism. Some brands claim to be green and organic while playing word games behind the scenes. For example, they rename preservatives as 'fermented fruit juice,' write tea polyphenols as 'green tea extract,' and equate '0 sucrose' with '0 sugar.' Exaggerated marketing rhetoric overdraws consumer trust, making it hard to recover after scandals because the reality doesn't match the claims. Even a brand with a clean ingredient list like Zhong Xue Gao, despite keeping carrageenan within standard doses, still cannot be forgiven by the consumer market, fundamentally because of the discrepancy between marketing language and actual product. Such practices exploit consumer fear of food additives to gain traffic, creating a new consumer pitfall around food additives.

Third, avoid significantly unreasonable perceptions caused by overreaction to food additives. For example, equating the presence of food additives with 'toxic' has become a cognitive habit. As a result, ancient rumors like 'instant noodles don't rot' and 'pigments cause blindness' still have undiminished lethality. Another misconception is that 'foreign food is definitely healthier than domestic food.' This year's incidents involving Korean snack brand Orion's cocoa butter substitute and Magnum's blatant double standards in ingredients for similar products domestically and abroad are ironclad evidence against such views. Moreover, generally, the more developed a country, the more types of food additives it has. Take the United States, a superpower, for example: its domestic food additives number up to 4,000, far higher than China's permitted nearly 2,500. Based on the above understanding, the answer is clear: For health, the use of food additives should be reduced; at the same time, if there are necessary needs like sterilization and preservation, the market urgently needs safer and healthier food additive solutions. In between lies the 'impossible triangle' of health, deliciousness, and cost-effectiveness, which essentially points to a multi-party game involving product quality, consumer preferences, and industry profits. Under the prevailing mindset of 'wanting it all' among merchants, consumers, and the entire market, such a game will undoubtedly continue for a long time. But there is no doubt that this is also the proper meaning of the continuous development of food technology.

**04 Clean Labels**
The most severe side effect of food additives is the erosion of human health. More than a decade later, many consumers still haven't recovered from food safety incidents caused by illegal additives like Sudan Red and melamine. This year, food safety incidents such as 'Master Kong's old phlegm pickled cabbage' and 'propylene glycol in McEr milk' have repeatedly provoked the public's fragile nerves. Studies have shown that even excluding extreme cases of serious violations, long-term intake of foods with standard amounts of additives is at least one of the causes of modern 'civilization diseases' or 'affluent diseases.' The health threat of additive foods is also an inevitable product of the development of the domestic food industry. 'Our lives are inseparable from food additives. It's no exaggeration to say that everyone consumes hundreds of food additives every day,' said the R&D manager of food additive company Beifang Xiaguang in an article. 'To make a loaf of bread, from start to finish, it probably takes 50 to 100 additives.' Based on this, and considering the condition that 'ingredient costs account for one-third of product costs,' for those numerous 'national foods' priced at a few yuan, do brands really not know what consumers are eating besides loneliness? In fact, behind all the doubts is consumers' growing emphasis on 'health.' It is precisely this growing aversion to food additives that provides opportunities for today's Chinese food brands to upgrade and iterate. For example, excessive sugar, calories, and fat intake can induce obesity, affect metabolism, and accelerate aging. Young people want to eat healthier and are becoming more cautious about processed foods and artificial additives, so brands are starting to work on ingredient lists. For instance, high-end tea beverage brands like Heytea and Naixue advocate real ingredients and freshly made milk tea, making traditional milk tea brands that use non-dairy creamer gradually exposed. The 'zero additive' wave in dairy products led by One Cow Raised by You and Jane Ho created a survival gap under the duopoly of Yili and Mengniu. The trend of naturally short-shelf-life, freshly made baked goods led by brands like Momo Pastry and Tiger Head Bureau has won some presence for Chinese-style pastries against the dominance of Western-style desserts. The upgrade of product brands is backed by the iteration of the entire industrial chain, including food additives. When discussing the mutual progress of food and food additives, and the win-win development of industry and brands, the case of Genki Forest, the 'father of 0-sugar marketing,' must be mentioned. Before Genki Forest, many consumer brands had discovered the health risks of sucrose and developed sugar substitutes. However, these food additives invented in the name of health not only still posed disease risks but were also not widely accepted by both supply and demand sides. Since Genki Forest's debut, a new type of sugar substitute, 'erythritol,' has become a prominent topic in both the food and food additive fields, even subtly changing the entire food consumer market. Based on current food technology and experimental data, erythritol cannot be placed on the absolute health whitelist. But this does not prevent erythritol from being a beneficial attempt at the continuous evolution of food additives and the food industry, nor does it prevent its deep integration with Genki Forest as an excellent case of industry branding and brand industrialization in the era of national trend consumption. Consumer choices and expectations are becoming more diverse, with higher demands for the healthiness of product ingredients and resonance with brand values. In other words, the current era can accommodate genuine ingredients and better food additive solutions, and can even bear the price increases they jointly push. When sucrose is replaced with '0-calorie' erythritol, potassium sorbate 'preservatives' are removed, and sodium benzoate 'preservatives' are also removed... Behind the new ingredient lists also means comprehensive upgrades in production technology and other aspects. It can be seen that the continuously simplified clean label has become a major trend.

Source: Guanchao New Consumption (ID: TideSight)
Author: Xinyi

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