Nowadays food additives are far more than just salt, vinegar, herbs and
spices. These compounds are essential to preserve and enhance the original
characteristics of foods in order to make them more appealing, nutritious, safe,
convenient and affordable. They also have an outstanding role in the production of
greater quantities of food with high- quality standards and in the obtainment of food to
promote well-being and health. This chapter focuses on the main controversies of food
additives, namely the duality between natural and synthetic antioxidants and provides
insight into their future trends. Although natural additives are generally preferred, they
can also present drawbacks such as low availability, high price, low potency, low food
compatibility and difficulty to predict the effect due to their multiple activities. In fact,
new food processing technologies are expected to slow down food additives use, but,
on the other hand, new additives, will replace the current ones in order to improve the
characteristics of foods, increase food safety and improve the health and well-being of
consumers.
Keywords: Controversies, Food additives, Future trends, Human health.
