You turn a packet over, read the ingredients, and near the bottom sit a few words and numbers you don't recognise. Food additives with E-numbers can look unfamiliar, but most are doing a quiet, ordinary job. This article walks through five additives you'll meet on labels everywhere — what each does and how much to care.
What an E-number on a food label really tells you
An E-number is just a code. It means the additive has been assessed and approved for use in food in Europe — nothing more, nothing less. It doesn't tell you the additive is risky, and it doesn't tell you it's harmless either. The number is a name, like a postcode.
Additives fall into a handful of jobs. Some keep oil and water mixed. Some stop food spoiling. Some hold texture together, protect colour and flavour, or add colour and flavour back. Knowing the job an additive does tells you far more than the number ever could, so that's where we'll start.
Five common food additives and what each one does
Here are five you'll meet across the supermarket, with the job they do and how much context they carry.
- Lecithin (E322) — emulsifier. Usually from soy or sunflower, lecithin keeps fat and water from separating. It's the reason chocolate stays smooth and a dressing doesn't split into oil and vinegar. You'll see it in chocolate, margarine, baked goods and many spreads. It's one of the more everyday entries — a structural helper that carries little baggage.
- Xanthan gum (E415) — thickener and stabiliser. Made by fermenting sugar, it gives body to liquids and stops solid bits sinking to the bottom. It shows up in sauces, salad dressings, ice cream and a lot of gluten-free baking, where it stands in for the structure gluten would normally give. A tiny amount does a big job, which is why it sits low in most ingredient lists.
- Ascorbic acid (E300) — antioxidant. This is simply vitamin C. It's added to stop fats going rancid and to keep cut fruit, juice and bread from browning or staling too fast. You'll find it in juices, cured meats, baked goods and many fortified products. Here the additive is a nutrient doing double duty — preserving the food and adding a little vitamin C along the way.
- Caramel colour (E150) — colour. Made by heating sugars, it gives the brown to colas, soy sauce, gravies, beer and some baked goods. Its job is cosmetic: it changes how a product looks, not how long it keeps. There are several sub-types, E150a to E150d, made by different processes, which is why you'll sometimes see a letter after the number on the label.
- Sodium nitrite (E250) — preservative. Used in cured meats like ham, bacon and salami, it fixes the familiar pink colour and, more importantly, holds back the bacteria behind botulism. This is the one in our five that carries the most context. It does real preservation work, and it's also the kind of additive Mira flags as higher-risk — an opinion about that ingredient, not a verdict that any product containing it is bad.
How Mira treats additives in a food score
Mira gives each food a transparency score from 0 to 100. The method is Mira's own — built on Nutri-Score principles and adapted to the product type — and it is not endorsed or approved by any health authority. The score is Mira's opinion, offered to help you choose, not an official ruling or a medical claim. The nutrition side looks at gauges like sugar, salt, saturated fat and calories. Additives sit alongside that.
Most additives — a lecithin, a xanthan gum, an ascorbic acid — pass through without dragging the score down. A few that Mira flags as higher-risk can cap the result, so a product lands in a lower band no matter how clean the rest of the label looks. That cap is deliberate, but it's still an opinion about the ingredient and the rating — not a verdict on you or on the product itself. A score judges a single product in isolation; it can't tell you whether your diet is healthy. That depends on how much and how often you eat something, and on your eating and lifestyle overall. You still decide what goes in the basket.
It also helps to separate the additives from the base recipe. A sweet drink scores poorly mostly because of its sugar, not because of its caramel colour. And because Mira stays independent — no paid placements, no brand advertising, with the database corrected over time as people scan — the score is only ever about the product, never about who made it. If you want to get sharper at spotting the sugar itself, see the many names sugar hides under on labels.
Using this in the shop tomorrow
Next time an E-number catches your eye, ask one question instead of worrying: what job is it doing? An emulsifier, a thickener and an antioxidant are usually routine. A preservative like sodium nitrite is worth a second look, especially if cured meat is a regular part of your week — because how much and how often you eat it matters more than any single label. Scan the product, read why the score landed where it did, and let the function — not the number — inform your choice.