Time for some good weekend reading. Checking out my RSS feed, I find a nice little list of 10 food additives and what they are used for. Yum!
8. Caramel Coloring
When you don’t have real cocoa to put in food, but you want to make it look like you did, you add caramel coloring. This is sometimes added to mixes and cake batters to make them look chocolatey. Mostly, though, caramel coloring is added to cooked meats, sodas and gravies to give them the golden-brown look that people find appetizing. It’s made by cooking up various sugars with agents like ammonium or alkali. Although it’s possibly carcinogenic, it hasn’t been yanked from shelves, because people love brown food. Love it.
If you want to find out what gives popcorn that (not exactly) buttery taste, or what alkali does to chocolate, check out the source link below.
(Via io9)