What you should know about food additives, condiments

In modern times the most common ones used are salt, pepper and bullion cubes( with popular brands like Maggi, Knorr, and  Star among others), mustard or pickle, and a variety of  refined seasonings and spices. In this country they are mostly used in soups, stews and gravies and are used to add flavor, preserve or […]

In modern times the most common ones used are salt, pepper and bullion cubes( with popular brands like Maggi, Knorr, and  Star among others), mustard or pickle, and a variety of  refined seasonings and spices.
In this country they are mostly used in soups, stews and gravies and are used to add flavor, preserve or enhance taste and appearance of food.
We have become so used to the modern additives that it is very rare these days to cook without them both in the cities and rural areas, unlike centuries before when mothers could cook without them. Infact many will find any food cooked without salt, pepper and bullion cubes very strange indeed.
Overtime people have become so concerned about the effects of  some of the major condiments on their health that a lot of myths and assumptions have begun to surround them.
While a person with some health problem could be advised by his physician for instance to limit his intake of salt other people on their own could stop eating or cooking with salt completely, not knowing that these can have negative effect on them especially if they have a health problem.
It is also common these days for one person or the other to advise others not to use bullion cubes  or packaged seasonings to cook saying they cause cancer .
The Home Front this week sought the views of an expert, Dr Henry Ewunonu , a pathologist and public health activist  on  the condiments -salt and bullion cubes. According to him any food additive has the potential of causing something.
Salt
The doctor said salt load in food can worsen hypertension but it does not cause any initio. He said: “This is because the black person lacks salt handling competencies. As a result, salt accumulates and leads to water retention which in turn increases the load on the circulation. That is how it affects hypertention.”
On using too little salt, he said the body can preserve salt so getting low salt diet will have no effect but if the kidneys are inefficient , the body fluid will “lose strength” or osmotic power and low blood pressure might result, adding “ low body salt could even disrupt many other functions like heart, brain and nerve functions”
Bullion cubes
On the speculation by some that monosodium glutamate contained in most bullion cubes causes cancer, Dr Ewunonu said glutamate as a taste enhancer has been epidemiologically associated with cancer but proof of causal relationship has been missing.