Oil and water

Emulsifiers are a common food additive with benefits including convenience, but are linked to gut conditions and inflammation.

- JENNIFER BOWDEN

QUESTION: What are emulsifiers in food, and are they bad for us?

ANSWER: Emulsifiers are one of the many food additives helping to hold together the modern food supply, quite literally. Their job is to ensure that mixtures of oiland water-based ingredients stay combined. They help improve shelf life, texture, taste and convenience.

Without emulsifiers, your salad dressing would separate into noticeable layers and your loaf of supermarket bread would go stale faster than you can say “toasted sandwich”.

At a chemical level, emulsifiers act like the diplomats of the food world: they help bring together ingredients that wouldn't usually get along. Most have both a water-loving (hydrophilic) and an oil-loving (lipophilic) end, enabling them to bind oil and water into a uniform mixture, preventing the mixture from separating.

They're commonly found in processed foods such as bread, margarine, mayonnaise, ice-cream, chocolate and many low-fat or low-sugar products that require extra stabilisation to mimic the creaminess of their full-fat variants. In bread, emulsifiers help keep the crumb soft and extend shelf life. Cheaper loaves that contain fewer emulsifiers will go stale more quickly.