Food ingredients
Food ingredients are all substances that are added to a food to achieve a desired effect. It also includes all food additives added to foods for specific technical and/or functional purposes during processing, storage or packaging.[1]
Food ingredients are devided in direct and indirect ingredients. Direct food additives are used to impart specific technological or functional qualities like stabilizers to help prevent separation of nutrients in fortified milk products or phosphates as a leavening agent in baked goods. Indirect additives are not intentionally added to food, but may be present in trace amounts from processing, packaging, shipping or storage. All food additives are controlled by national regulatory authorities and must be proven safe to be used in foods.[1]
Specific food ingredients
Depending on the chemical structure, composition, and application field the food ingredients can be divided into different groups. The following non-exhaustive list shows the potential main groups. The decision support tool aids the search for suitable conversion technologies capable to produce these food ingredients from food waste as well as garden and park waste.
- Agriculture
- Antimicrobial compounds
- Food
- Bakery products
- Fermented foods
- Flavour compounds
- Food ingredients
- Halal & Kosher
- Mixed starter culture
- Peptides
- Proteins
- Single cell protein
- Specialty carbohydrates
- Sugar monomers
- Sugars
- Vanillin
Weblinks
References
- ↑ a b Definition from International Food Additives Council: What are Food Ingredients?