Episode 80: Navigating the Food Additive Maze

Episode 80: Navigating the Food Additive Maze

In this episode, I’m unpacking one of the most confusing and overwhelming parts of feeding kids today: food additives.

This conversation comes straight off the back of my recent TV segments on Sunrise, where we talked about ice creams and ingredients lists. It sparked a lot of questions from parents, and honestly, it highlighted just how far our food supply has shifted over the years. Even foods we once thought were simple are now packed with additives, preservatives, sweeteners and colours that our grandparents wouldn’t recognise.

In this episode, I walk you through what food additives actually are, why they’re used, and why they matter so much for children’s nutrition. We talk about the evidence linking artificial colours and preservatives to children’s behaviour and gut health, including the well-known University of Southampton study funded by the UK Food Standards Authority. I also share practical, realistic ways to reduce your child’s additive load without aiming for perfection.

If you’re feeding a picky eater or fussy eater and trying to balance convenience with a healthy diet for fussy eaters, this episode will give you clarity, not fear.

Links:
https://nourishwithkarina.com/feedingbabies
https://nourishwithkarina.com/membership

Highlights:

Decoding the Food Additive Maze: What Every Parent Needs to Know (00:00.128)
Is Your Food Safe? A Guide to Ingredients You Can Trust (00:29.57)
Junk Food Masquerade: How to Spot Hidden Additives (02:48.6)
Chemical Additives and Kids: What Parents Need to Know (04:59.736)
Food Additives Explained: What Every Parent Needs to Know (07:22.392)
Food Additives: What Your Kids Are Really Eating (09:45.036)
Small Swaps, Big Impact: Reducing Additives for Kids(12:00.618)
Reducing Additives in Kids’ Snacks Made Simple (14:14.722)
Hidden Additives, Real Impact (16:32.044)

Show notes

READ TRANSCRIPT

Show Notes

In this episode, we cover:

The modern food problem
How ultra-processed foods and misleading marketing have reshaped children’s nutrition.

What food additives actually are
A clear breakdown of preservatives, colours, sweeteners, emulsifiers and more.

What the research tells us
The link between additives, gut health, inflammation and children’s behaviour.

Real-life examples parents ask about
Ice blocks, “low sugar” products and why some swaps are not as healthy as they seem.

Where to start without overwhelm
Simple, realistic steps to reduce additives for your child, one food at a time.

Helpful links and resources:

Karina’s Programs and Guides https://nourishwithkarina.com/programsandguides

Karina’s Supermarket Guru Program https://nourishwithkarina.com/guru

Join my Private Group! https://nourishwithkarina.com/privategroup

Healthy Recipes for Kids: https://nourishwithkarina.com/healthy-recipes-for-kids

The Three-Week Feeding Kids Reset https://nourishwithkarina.com/3weeks

Healthy Snack Supermarket Guide https://nourishwithkarina.com/3weeks

Healthy Kids Snacks & Lunchbox Planner https://nourishwithkarina.com/planner

Decoding the Food Additive Maze: What Every Parent Needs to Know (00:00.128)
You're listening to the Easy Feed Podcast, episode number 80, navigating the food additive maze.

Hi there, I'm Karina Savage and with over 20 years experience feeding children, including my own, I've learnt all the secrets that busy mums need to get their children eating better and actually enjoying healthy foods. So a huge welcome to the Easy Feed Podcast.

Is Your Food Safe? A Guide to Ingredients You Can Trust (00:29.57)
Welcome back and happy new year. Happy 2026. I hope you're really well. I have just been celebrating Christmas and the new year with all of our family members that have been visiting. We've had both sets of our parents who made the effort really to come and share it with us at Christmas and our new year, which was super special. So they'd not seen a Sydney fireworks before. So we were able to share that with them and yeah, it was really special time of year. So.

Yeah, I hope that you are well and that you are able to take some time off or if you haven't yet, that you are able to at least have a little bit of downtime. Today, I wanted to talk about food additives and this is really off the back of my Sunrise 7, Channel 7 segment on TV this morning, where we talked about the best ice creams. Now in my TV segments, I will often weave in different themes and educational sort of learnings on

various things and often I'm talking about ingredients lists and food additives and what to include or what to avoid. So I thought it was time to have a little refresher on food additives because if we're honest, food has really changed significantly over the years from when our parents were buying food in the supermarkets to now. My goodness, it has changed. Even the junk food back then, like the Oreos and the Ritz.

Those junk foods have significantly worsened with their ingredients list. It's phenomenal. And it's really disappointing. And it's really a representation of where our current food standards are, which is pretty bottom of the barrel. It really needs to improve. I always like to say if your grandfather or your grandmother didn't know the ingredients or don't know the ingredients on the ingredients list, then it's probably best to leave it on the shelf and not bring it into our homes. But the thing is,

It's really hard to find food products that meet that criteria because most of the time there's going to be ingredients in there that our grandparents wouldn't know what they were. Even breadcrumbs are a minefield. Some breadcrumbs are simply, you know, wheat flour and oil and a bit of salt. Others have about 25 ingredients, including thickeners and emulsifiers and sugar. So it's a real minefield, this area, and it's really important to be mindful of

Junk Food Masquerade: How to Spot Hidden Additives (02:48.6)
picking up the product and looking at the ingredients list, which you know, I'm preaching to the converted here because I'm talking to parents who care about their kids nutrition, because you're listening to this podcast. So I'm pretty sure you are already looking at the ingredients list and I'm pretty sure you may have even considered using one of those apps. Now those apps are variable. Some are better than others, but you know, at end of the day, it's something to help guide you unless you downloaded one of my guides or you use my supermarket guru program.

And by the way, I'll pop the links to my supermarket guide and my supermarket guru program in the show notes. But at the end of the day, I think all we can do as parents is to recognise that we are in a current climate where there is way too much junk food on the shelves. Market it as healthy, I have to say. And it's really up to us as parents to advocate for our kids, choose better options for our children.

when we're in an environment where our food standards don't really protect our kids or don't really help us. It was only a few hours ago that I was posting on Instagram, my handles nourish with Karina. And I was posting a summary of my TV segment this morning on best ice creams. And someone had seen that and posted a comment about Hydrolyte and said to me, kids Hydrolyte options, like kids Hydrolyte ice blocks a better option than the healthy ice?

blocks that I shared, and you can check out all of this on my Instagram. And I actually did a bit of research into the Hydrolyte ice blocks after that question. And I discovered that it's not easy to find this information, of course, but when you dig a bit, it's all there. And there are two preservatives used in the Hydrolyte ice blocks and in all of the ice blocks, except for the lemonade.

And they use a sweetener in there called sucralose, which is really unhealthy for our gut health, not a sweetener I would recommend. So they've got sweeteners in it, sucralose and also these preservatives. So hydrolite ice blocks are definitely not a healthier option compared to the ones that I talked about today. So the icy poles that I talked about today that were better were

Chemical Additives and Kids: What Parents Need to Know (04:59.736)
Frosty fruits, the original frosty fruit, not the low sugar one, because again, that brings in artificial sweeteners and other additives. And then the Juicy's was the other one, was good, which was a hundred percent juice. And I'm really glad that parents are now being really strong advocates for their children. And they're trying to be more informed about this area because as I said, at the moment, our food standards don't protect them and that it certainly don't help us. And I think because they're allowed in our food,

There used to be this acceptance that they were safe for us, you know, this natural assumption that they were fine to give our kids because you would think that if they were allowed in our food chain, our food supply, they would be safe for us. But I think the jury is becoming more and more out on that topic, especially when they're combined with preservatives and things like that. I don't think we really know what these chemically engineered additives are actually doing to our bodies.

especially when they're consumed in combination in the same product. There is very clear evidence now about a direct link between artificial food colors, preservatives and children's attention and behavior and worsening of attention and behavior symptoms in children when they're consuming these food additives, such as artificial colors and preservatives. The preservative there in that study was sodium benzoate.

We know that these additives can be gut health disruptors. They can impact our gut microbiome. They can increase the risk of inflammation and therefore directly that impacts our overall health. love sharing the results of this UK funded study. It was conducted by the University of Southampton. It was actually funded by the UK Food Standards Authority. And I think this is brilliant. Like it's very forward thinking. And they studied 300 children aged

three to eight years of age. And what they found was that when these children consumed foods and drinks with these artificial food colors and preservatives, they found a significant increase in ADHD like symptoms and behaviors when they consume these products. And what they concluded was that if these additives were banned, the 6.6 % of children who are suffering in the UK with ADHD

Food Additives Explained: What Every Parent Needs to Know (07:22.392)
They're saying that that would be reduced by 30%. So that means that instead of 6.6 % of children in the UK suffering with ADHD, there would only be 4.5%. If that's my math, I don't know, 4.4 or 4.5, whatever 30 % of that is. know 33 % would be 4.4 % of the top of my head. It's about that anyway, which is significant. It's incredible. If you think about it, that's like thousands and thousands and millions of kids, right?

And that's just kids. It's probably relevant to adults too, because there's more and more adults being diagnosed with ADHD too. Often I'll hear that, you know, friends, kids are being diagnosed and then the parents are being diagnosed. So it's, it's the ripple effect is big and it could be a really beneficial ripple effect if we're reducing these food additives. So now let's move on to what are food additives? So what exactly

Am I talking about when I say food additives, what are we actually looking for? So food additives are substances that are added to food to keep them fresh or to enhance their color, their appearance, their flavor, their texture. So they're added for various reasons to prolong shelf life. That's your preservatives. Okay. So they could include food colorings. They could include flavor enhancers, preservatives.

And most food additives are listed on the ingredients list. Okay. So legally they have to be declared. Sometimes the additive is spelled out in full, the full name, or sometimes we just get a number. Okay. So it could be either way. So the preservative might be as the word like sodium benzoate, or it might be as the number 211. So we have anti-caking agents. Okay. So they stop ingredients from becoming lumpy. have antioxidants which prevent foods from

oxidizing or going rancid. We have artificial sweeteners to increase the sweetness without the sugar often in these no sugar or low sugar products. put the sweeteners in instead. We have emulsifiers to stop the fats from clotting together and to keep it a nice smooth consistency. We have food acids to maintain the right acidity or the acid level in the food. We have colors to enhance the color to make it look better and look more palatable.

Food Additives: What Your Kids Are Really Eating (09:45.036)
We have humectants, which keep food moist. have flavors, obviously for flavor. We have foaming agents, which are used to maintain like a uniform aeration of gases. So when they have to form bubbles in the product so that the bubbles are more even, there's foaming agents. So for example, I think of something like an aerobar, for example, would use a foaming agent, or I'm assuming it would use a foaming agent. Mineral salts, which enhance the texture and flavor.

preservatives to stop the microbes from spoiling, thickeners and vegetable gums to enhance the texture and consistency of the food stabilizers and firming agents, which maintain an even food dispersion. So similar to the emulsifiers, flour treatment, improve baking quality, glazing agents on the top. So that can also protect the food, gelling agent to alter the textures of food through gel formation.

raising agents to help increase the volume of the food through the use of gases, propellants help propel food from a container and bulking agents to increase the volume of food without major changes to its available energy. You know, you name it, it just continues on and on and on. And it's hard to know exactly which ones are okay and which ones aren't. Now, look, I talk about a lot of this inside my private support group.

Because parents are like, this okay, Karina? And even yesterday, it was actually today I answered a question. There was a sweet potato from Aldi, frozen sweet potato. And Kim asked me the question. She said, Karina, is this okay? And I gave her my thoughts on this frozen sweet potato from Aldi and whether it was a healthy choice or not. She also wanted me to review some turkey risals, which I also did.

You know, it's important to be able to provide that feedback to say yay or nay, because sometimes it can be really hard to know exactly what we're looking for. Because sometimes it can be really hard to know which ones are okay and can be tolerated and which ones you really should avoid. And what I recommend with kids is that we start somewhere because it's really hard to avoid all additives for us as well as our kids.

Small Swaps, Big Impact: Reducing Additives for Kids(12:00.618)
You know, it's almost a full-time job to be able to cook and prepare for a child that is completely additive free. So I say, look, let's just do the best we can in a challenging situation. And I'm sure my kids would eat additives daily as well. The thing is it's how many additives are they consuming? And my advice would be to start by trying to swap one food. So for example, pick up their muesli bar or pick up their crackers and have a look and see if there's food additives in that.

And if there is try and swap it for one that doesn't have food additives and that simple swap daily, weekly, monthly, annually, it makes a difference. So the goal here is not to be perfect because that's not fair in any of us, but if we can make small consistent changes, they will all add up and that way you will be reducing your child's overall additive load.

Now in my supermarket guide, I've got over 85 healthy supermarket snacks and foods for kids from muesli bars to crackers to breakfast cereals to ice creams. And you can certainly grab that by the link in my show notes. I have my supermarket guru program, which gives you all of the information at your fingertips. And on my app, you can have that on your phone. So you've got all the information there. And of course, if you're wanting me to review products on a regular basis, then

Check out my private group. Now, all of this information can be found on my website under the one page, is nourishedwithkarina.com forward slash programs and guides, but we will try and pop the links to these in the show notes. I'm just here to try and provide you with as much information and help you as much as possible navigate this tricky time, because I feel like it's unprecedented times right now where food companies are really winning. Like they're ahead of the game. They're still able to put all this.

junk in our kids' food and the food standards haven't caught up yet. It's interesting to note that over in the US, there's just been this class action. One of the big food companies has been sued because of the rubbish that's in their food and the health implications and the detrimental health effects on people because of their food, which is brilliant. Like it's creative. These big companies that are just basically making us ill and addicted.

Reducing Additives in Kids’ Snacks Made Simple (14:14.722)
They should be held accountable. Like it's just wrong. yeah, really interesting. Watch this space. But I think at the moment we're in kind of the worst of the worst situations because they're still allowed to pump all this rubbish into our kids' food. It's marketed as healthy. And as parents, we're so busy and time poor. The kids love it. Pest to power. The kids are on the white diet. So we just give it to them and everyone's doing it. So we think it's okay, but it's actually not. So anyway, we'll get there, but you know, awareness is the first step and you're a hundred percent aware listening to this.

And then, you know, I'm also pretty sure that you're actually feeding your child less additives than most, because again, you're listening to this podcast. I just wanted to say that some of the visible side effects of excessive food additive intake can be poor gut health, and then it can also present other ways. So some kids do react and are sensitive to additives and they can have

respiratory problems, can cause respiratory problems in some kids, they can cause skin problems like hives and rashes in some kids. And this is certainly not to say that this is for all kids, but it certainly happens in some kids that are very super sensitive to some food additives. So if you're listening to this and you're thinking, my gosh, Karina, where do I even start? So where I would start is by trying to find one food that your child

has consistently. you're like thinking if you only just stop and think about maybe the three really regular foods your child has and pick one of them or pick all three, read the ingredients list and just check to see if it's got any artificial colors, any sweeteners, preservatives. And if it does, then try and find a better alternative. And as I said, I've got plenty of guides and tips and groups to look at and work out which one is best for you to get that support.

And then make that one change, do it consistently and then make another change. And that's the way we make small steps to reduce the additive load. Never aiming for zero additives because that's near impossible, but reducing the real bad ones. And I would really focus on artificial colors, artificial sweeteners and where artificial colors and preservatives are mixed together because that's what the University of Southampton study showed. It's when those two are mixed together.

Hidden Additives, Real Impact (16:32.044)
That's when things can go really pear shaped, especially for children that are neurodivergent. All right. I will wrap it up there. hope your brain is not spinning too much after this podcast episode. As I said, if you want an even deeper dive into all my yeses and no options for foods and food additives, then it's all there in supermarket guru. You will also be able to find it by heading to nourishwithkarina.com forward slash guru. you have any questions about this podcast episode, please feel free to send me a message.

either via email, hello at nourrishwithkarina.com or via Instagram. It's always great chatting with you and I look forward to chatting with you again soon. Bye for now.