Emulsifiers

Few chemical additives outrank the so called emulsifiers as a bonanza to the food processor and few are more suspect of causing damage to humans than some of those widely used compounds. Emulsifiers have many uses in foods: they promote smoothness, and keep incompatible ingredients like oil and water from separating they may also be used to give stale baked goods a deceptive appearance of freshness and they act as substitutes for more costly and nutritious natural ingredients such as eggs, milk, butter, and vegetable shortening.
Some emulsifiers, in only moderate doses, have been shown to be extremely poisonous to animals, others have not been adequately tested. Yet tens of millions of pounds of emulsifiers are used annually in foods. These compounds have a variety of names softeners, surface active agents, wetting agents some are very close chemically to detergents used in laundering and cleaning. Two main categories of emulsifiers are used in foods. To the chemist the first is composed of mono and diglycerides, the second of polyoxyethylene monostearate and related compounds. More familiarly, they are known as the glycerides and poly compounds. The former are artificial fats derived from glycerides the latter are derived in part from ethylene oxide.
Chemicals which facilitate emulsions are the emulsifiers, but their action generally has to be supplemented with chemicals called stabilisers which prevent the emulsions from breaking down. Altogether, fifty seven different chemicals are permitted as either emulsifiers or stabilisers, with E numbers and plus lecithin. It was found that when small amounts of the glyceride compounds were mixed with shortening and incorporated into baked goods their use resulted in more tender bread, buns, cake, and other sweet goods.