"No aluminum" for three years: "aluminum" see fresh? ——A three-year investigation on the effect of the implementation of the food "ban on aluminum"

A stick of oil, a bun, and sweet soymilk make a good day for most people from a delicious breakfast However, eating delicious does not mean eating safe Since May 2014, the "most forbidden aluminum order in history" was issued, and five departments including the national health and Family Planning Commission jointly issued the announcement on adjusting the use regulations of aluminum containing food additives, which requires that the use of aluminum containing additives and aluminum containing bulking agents in food processing and production is prohibited As of May 2017, the "ban on aluminum" has been implemented for three years, so what is the effect of the "ban on aluminum"? Before the implementation of the "ban on aluminum", food additives containing aluminum were easily available in the market In a food marketing market in Xi'an, a seasoning boss told reporters that baking powder as a kind of compound leavening agent can help speed up flour fermentation and save production time when making bread, bread and other flour products Now, in this market, there are two kinds of baking powder sold: one is imported baking powder, which is sold in barrels, and the price is more expensive The price of baking powder in 3000 grams is more than 100 yuan The other is the domestic non aluminum foam powder after the "no aluminum order" was issued "Now this kind of domestic food additive is selling well, the market supervision is strict, and the regular market has eliminated the aluminum containing food additive." The owner of the seasoning shop told reporters At the same time, the reporter visited a number of large supermarkets, "no aluminum" is relatively in place, even the steamed bun and other products in the quick-frozen area of the supermarket are added with bulking agent, but the ingredients printed on the package are mainly composed of sodium bicarbonate, disodium dihydrogen pyrophosphate and calcium hydrophosphate, and there is no trace of aluminum containing food additives As early as March 1, 2012, experts from the national food safety risk assessment center issued the risk assessment of dietary aluminum exposure for Chinese residents, which showed that nearly one third of the aluminum intake of Chinese residents exceeded the safety value, and in the northern region dominated by pasta, more than 60% of the aluminum intake exceeded the standard The main cause of this situation is aluminum in food additives, which contributes 75% It is estimated that as the main source of dietary aluminum intake, flour, steamed bread, fried dough sticks, noodles, etc may be over used due to the excessive use of aluminum containing food additives       On May 22, 2014, the national health and Family Planning Commission and other five departments officially issued a notice on adjusting the provisions on the use of aluminum containing food additives, which clearly pointed out that since July 1, 2014, sodium aluminum phosphate, sodium aluminosilicate and aluminum octenylsuccinate starch are forbidden to be used in the production, operation and use of food additives; aluminum containing food additives are not allowed to be used in the production of expanded food; wheat and its products (except for fried flour products, batter, wrapping powder and fried powder) aluminum potassium sulfate and aluminum ammonium sulfate shall not be used in the production, which is the most stringent "aluminum ban order" in the industry "The Provincial Bureau began to monitor the daily food of residents in our province many years ago, including flour, steamed bread, noodles, bread, pancakes, pastries, biscuits, chips, cold noodles, cold skin, pulled skin, jellyfish and puffed food that may use aluminum additives." Shaanxi food and drug administration field told reporters At present, the aluminum additive food in our province is within the controllable range "Aluminum" is rarely found in the "three small" and "now the formal food enterprises are very strictly controlled The real danger prone area is the small catering vendors in the supervision gap." Chen Chunge, the food and Drug Administration of Lianhu District, told reporters, "breakfast and night vendors are all in the" three small "range, with large flow and very difficult supervision." In the south section of Anton street, there will be a bustling breakfast market in the morning Along the street two or three hundred meters long, there are nearly ten breakfast stalls, steamed buns, fried dough sticks, steamed buns, steamed cakes Reporters randomly selected one of the baozi shops The business of this shop is good A circle of people are around the steamer waiting to buy baozi The bun looks big and fluffy "The price of baking powder we buy is relatively low What we do in this industry is to make small profits and sell more How can we make money when the cost is high?" The boss said bluntly, "we will use whatever the guests like." As for how much foam and powder should be added when making noodles, the boss said, all depends on experience and hand feeling In their opinion, since it is a kind of food additive that can be circulated on the market, it can be used       The reporter learned that, first of all, most of these stores are traditional manual stores, no matter they are steamed buns or fried dough sticks, they all adopt the traditional way, there is no quantitative standard for the amount of raw materials used in the production process, and they have no knowledge of new regulations, new raw materials and new technologies Secondly, there are many small stalls, which are widely distributed and have strong mobility This is the reason why the aluminum in small and medium-sized restaurants exceeds the standard seriously in the results of sampling inspection in many places in China "In order to achieve the ideal fluffy effect in the way of making traditional oil sticks, the amount of additives may exceed the national standards," said the food and drug regulatory staff If it is added according to the national standard, the fluffy degree of the strip will be affected " Therefore, even if the law provides that the fried noodle products can use the aluminized bulking agent, and specifies the limit standard, the actual situation of the current market is still somewhat embarrassing "The aluminum containing additives in baozi, bread and fried dough sticks can be replaced by non aluminum bulking agent, but the three powder processing enterprises such as fans, vermicelli and peels are now very difficult There is an old saying in the three powder processing industry that "no alum, no powder" However, the announcement stipulates that the aluminum residue is ≤ 200mg / kg, which will cause a devastating impact on the inheritance of traditional technology After no alum, the properties of the vermicelli are obviously changed, and the vermicelli will be rotten as soon as it is cooked The enterprise is also trying to find alternative products of alum, and at the same time, it is asking for advice from the monitoring department and relevant experts in food safety supervision " Tang Xin, deputy director of Shaanxi food safety expert Monitoring Committee, told reporters How to distinguish the "aluminum" containing surface products? "Aluminum is the most abundant element in the earth's crust Many raw materials for food production contain aluminum Therefore, we will determine the risk range value according to the situation when monitoring, and the aluminum intake does not exceed a certain amount every week, which has little impact on human body." Experts explained that there are many misunderstandings in the understanding of monitoring the aluminum content in food, and even thought that no matter how much aluminum is contained, it is not good for human body The limits of aluminum residue in different kinds of food stipulated in China are different: aluminum residue can not be detected in general flour products, aluminum residue in fried food such as fried dough sticks and sesame seeds is less than or equal to 100mg / kg, aluminum residue in three powder products such as dough sticks is less than or equal to 200mg / kg, and aluminum residue in salted aquatic products such as jellyfish is less than or equal to 500mg / kg Ordinary people don't know this standard before "talking about aluminum color change" The existence of excessive aluminum will pose a potential threat to human health, including human thinking, consciousness, memory function, nerve damage, etc The supervision and law enforcement personnel can sample and check whether the food contains aluminum In daily life, the common people do not have a pair of "golden eyes" comparable to accurate instruments How to use a pair of naked eyes to distinguish whether the food in your mouth contains aluminum?       Provincial Food and drug administration staff told reporters the simplest way to distinguish: for example, the most common steamed buns and steamed buns, the finished products with aluminum containing food additives, look fluffy, and look at the fermentation pores after breaking them off, which are also small and even; on the contrary, the steamed buns and steamed buns without aluminum additives look relatively dry and solid, and the fermentation pores are not so uniform and beautiful , but it's very chewy Another example is noodles, vermicelli and other flour products We can judge whether there is aluminum in them It mainly depends on whether the noodles will stick and break, because some aluminum additives have the effect of anti knot After they are added, the flour products are not easy to stick The provincial food and drug administration staff said that in the next step, they will carry out more publicity activities to promote the popularization of law We will continue to deploy every quarter to strengthen supervision and inspection of the enterprises involved, and guide the enterprises to standardize the production of relevant food and food additives At the same time, the supervision department will also increase the supervision and spot check, once the violation is found, it will be dealt with according to law.