Food additives seem to be a topic that cannot be avoided by the food industry, but the people are generally rejected. I am not a science blogger, so I dare not speak out about this matter. However, if we observe the widespread use of food additives from an economic perspective, we will find that this is a contradictory economic account. To a certain extent, this is a helpless choice for middle- and low-income people to pursue happiness; at the same time, consumers' passive perception of the price center has wrongly affected their choices.
Scientific knowledge tells us that the rational use of artificially synthesized food additives is harmless. But the problem is that the amount of additive-containing foods that everyone consumes every day is different. What is the cumulative risk? This requires professionals to give an answer.
Food additives can be divided into two categories: one is natural substances, such as salt; the other is artificially synthesized, such as saccharin, which people reject.
Take soy sauce as an example. In fact, there are soy sauces that do not contain additives in the domestic market, but the price is more than 50% more expensive. For manufacturers, the cost of additives is almost negligible; for consumers, under similar colors, fragrances, and tastes, people naturally choose cheaper products. There is a principle in economics called "consumer choice theory". In short, people will definitely choose the products that they think are the best cost-effective, even if this choice seems irrational in hindsight.
If consumers are generally willing to spend higher prices on soy sauce for higher quality, soy sauce filled with various additives will naturally withdraw from the market. But why didn't this happen in reality?
This has to talk about the "Engel coefficient" that measures people's happiness. 165 years ago, German economist Engel discovered that the smaller the proportion of food expenditure in total personal consumption expenditure, the stronger the people's sense of happiness. For consumers, buying cheap food is far easier than increasing personal income. It is obviously different from the traditional low product quality. For example, people spend 30 yuan to buy a pair of leather shoes, which may break in less than a week, but it is difficult for people to feel this when they buy cheap food. Therefore, it has become the goal of some merchants to dig into reducing food prices, and using various additives is a shortcut.
But it is undeniable that there is another type of merchant that does not use food additives in order to cater to consumers' demand for lowering prices, but to make huge profits. For example, it is an open secret to make freshly squeezed juice without fruit, and it is a public secret to make beef soup with beef. From an economic perspective, this is a bad method for some merchants to increase profits when prices and sales cannot be increased. However, as we are moving towards an aging society, the sales of most products will not be able to continue to grow in the future. Does this mean that the future consumption environment will inevitably be dangerous?
Don’t consumers know the simple truth about what you pay for? Why don’t people want to spend more money on food consumption? This also involves the market center of commodity prices. When the general price of a certain type of commodity is around 10 yuan, people will naturally think that the price is reasonable.
Theoretically, the formation of commodity prices under the background of market economy is determined by both buyers and sellers. Speaking of which, everyone understands that the price will rise if there is less supply; substitutes of similar functions, such as soy sauce and salt, have a certain substitution function. When the price of salt rises sharply, the price of soy sauce will have the urge to rise. These are the basic theories of economics. But it is undeniable that large enterprises with market dominance have an anchoring effect on the price center of a certain type of commodity. For example: We have many choices to buy clothes, so no clothing company has a market dominance, so there is no obvious price center for clothes. But it’s different for us to buy soy sauce. There are only a few brands in the market, and the price distribution is relatively concentrated.
So on the other hand, we cannot blame consumers for greed for cheapness, which leads to the widespread use of additives in soy sauce, and enterprises are still the main body of this matter.
Foreign consumers are also greedy for cheapness. Why do Japanese, Russian and other countries seem to use less additives than us? Taking Japan as an example, data shows that as of 2021, the number of food additives in Japan was 829, and currently there are 2,325 in China. There are also more than 4,000 types than us, such as the United States. The reason why people think that Japan uses fewer additives is that on the one hand, there are indeed fewer varieties, but on the other hand, the policy environment is different. In Japan, some additives are not written on the packaging, not that there is no, but that they are not written.
In 1981, China had only a few dozen types of food additives, and it was inevitable that the food industry would develop so many later. The United States and Russia are two counterexamples. The United States has developed food industry and Russia's light industry is backward, so one is crazy more and the other is crazy less.
From an economic perspective, no matter how strong the public opinion responds, food additives will still fill our lives. What ordinary people can do is choose what they want and try to overcome the price attraction. When people are generally willing to pay higher prices for more natural foods, the economy can form a virtuous cycle and the income of middle- and low-income people can also be significantly improved. This is actually the difference between Japan and the United States. The gap between the rich and the poor in the United States is huge, and a large number of poor Americans need a sense of happiness built up by additives.
