Throughout history, human beings are cultivating, harvesting food, and processing it with sophisticated methods. In ancient Greece, bread, olive oil, and wine were three products. These were the products in which the hardly edible raw materials were transformed to safe, nutritious, and stable food. Historically, there is a tradition to add ingredients or substance to foods for a particular function like ancient Egyptian used spices in food for flavoring. They used yeast in bread as leavening agent. They also used coriander and castor oil for medicinal application, cosmetics, and as preservative. Color was also used in candy and wine. In Japan, during 8th century, color was used in soybean and cakes.

Foods are the substances that are consumed in solid and/or liquid form to get nutritional benefits. Food additives are used in food from ancient times like salt is used in preservation of meat, herbs and spices are used for the improvement of food flavor, sugar is used as a preservative of fruits, and pickles were prepared with spices and vinegar. Use of processed food is increasing day by day. As a result, there is an increased use of food additives and preservatives. Additives are any substances that are used at any stage of food processing with various objective like the following: