Approved additives and E-numbers (UK)

[helvella]

As food additives are often discussed, I thought it might be useful to post the current list of approved additives in the UK.

Note that the use of substances in foods is largely separate to their use in medicines. One example being Titanium dioxide which is now banned in foods in the EU and Northern Ireland. This ban does NOT apply to medicines.

There are many reasons for these differences. In this case, it is unfeasible to reformulate the many medicines which contain Titanium dioxide - often in very small quantities - in a short to medium time scale. Also, the majority of Titanium dioxide ingestion has been addressed by the measures applied to foods, the remaining use in medicines is much smaller in scale.

Sometimes medicines include a substance which has an E-number but do not include that E-number - even when other such substances in the same product do have their E-numbers. (It might just be a case of it taking time for new rules to be enforced.)

Sodium benzoate would be E211 in foods and also as listed for many other medicines.

Sodium saccharin would be E954 in foods and also as listed for many other medicines.

It also contains sodium benzoate, saccharin sodium, trusil orange flavour, orange colour (containing sunset yellow (E110) and ponceau 4R (E124)) and sucrose.

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Approved additives and E numbers

Additives and E numbers for colours, preservatives, antioxidants, sweeteners, emulsifiers, stabilisers, thickeners and other types of additives.

(At time of posting, the page claims Last updated: 22 August 2023 )

food.gov.uk/business-guidan...

[Zephyrbear]

I have just been prescribed Montelukast for asthma and it has a host of E-numbers so I shall be cross checking them. Thank you helvella

[helvella Administrator Thyroid UK in reply to Zephyrbear]

Indeed it can be important to know what is in a product (food or medicine).

The E-number system is sometimes viewed as a shortcut to identifying something "bad" or "artificial", or a host of other negatives.

Truth is, it is a way of consistently identifying things which often have different names by language, or have multiple names, or have names which are difficult to read or pronounce or understand at all.

For example:

E160c Paprika extract; Capsanthian; Capsorubin

Which at least appears to be basically a vegetable extract - and one that many of us would be fine with.