If you’re a fan of this very popular flavor in chips and other food products, prepare to live without it! The European Commission has decided to ban its marketing for health reasons.
Like many consumers, you may be a fan of chips. This food is certainly not the healthiest, but its irresistible taste generally makes everyone agree, which means that they accompany us everywhere, from picnics to cinema screenings, including evenings with friends . However, you may be slightly frustrated if you are particularly a fan of bacon or smoked barbecue flavored chips, but also of bacon, sausages, cheeses and other sauces with artificial smoke flavors. Indeed, they should soon no longer be marketed, at least in their current composition, for health reasons.
It turns out that most of these processed food products are not actually wood smoked, as was once done for preservation purposes. These are actually smoke flavorings, made by liquefying wood smoke, which are added to foods to give them this flavor.
However, the substances manufactured by this process could carry risks of genotoxicity, that is to say inducing DNA damage, according to observations from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). This can increase the risk of developing conditions such as cancers or hereditary diseases. In short, we’re not kidding.
However, these flavors are currently found almost everywhere in our food. Also, in April 2024, the European Commission decided not to renew the authorization of eight smoke flavorings used to flavor foodstuffs. After a period of gradual withdrawal, these flavors can no longer be used in the European Union.
It will take two years for the most processed products such as chips, sauces, pizzas or soups, and five years for products that are traditionally smoked, but which also use flavorings. This ban therefore does not concern products smoked in the traditional way, such as salmon, meat, ham or certain cheeses, on which the mention “Natural aromas”.