E-numbers, in plain English.

What the number tells you

The ranges follow the job, not the risk.

• E100 to E199 Colours. 69 on our list, including tartrazine, cochineal, beta-carotene.
• E200 to E299 Preservatives. 57 on our list, including sodium nitrite, sulphur dioxide, sodium benzoate.
• E300 to E399 Antioxidants and acidity regulators. 57 on our list, including vitamin C, citric acid, lecithin.
• E400 to E499 Thickeners, emulsifiers and stabilisers. 90 on our list, including pectin, mono- and diglycerides, carrageenan.
• E500 to E599 Acidity regulators and anti-caking agents. 56 on our list, including sodium bicarbonate, silicon dioxide.
• E600 to E699 Flavour enhancers. 22 on our list, including monosodium glutamate, disodium inosinate.
• E900 to E999 Glazing agents, gases and sweeteners. 59 on our list, including aspartame, sucralose, sorbitol.
• E1000 upwards Modified starches, enzymes and everything else. 49 on our list, including modified starch, lysozyme.

What E-numbers do in your body

Most do nothing you would ever notice. They pass through, or they are things the body already runs on: ascorbic acid is vitamin C, citric acid is what makes a lemon sour, pectin is the fibre that sets jam.

A minority have documented effects, and those are the ones worth knowing about:

• Six artificial colours carry a required warning about activity and attention in children.
• Sodium nitrite (E250) in processed and cured meat reacts with meat proteins to form N-nitroso compounds. Processed meat is classified by the IARC as causing cancer in humans, and the NHS caps it at 70g a day.
• Sulphites (E220 to E228) can trigger wheezing and asthma symptoms in people who react to them. Sulphur dioxide is one of the 14 allergens UK law requires to be declared.
• Sugar alcohols such as sorbitol (E420) pull water into the large intestine. Above roughly 50g a day that means bloating, cramps and diarrhoea.

That is the whole honest answer. There is no single thing that "E-numbers" do, because the label covers vitamins and warning-label colours under one word.

The six colours that carry a warning

UK law requires six artificial colours to print the words "May have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children" on the pack: tartrazine (E102), quinoline yellow (E104), sunset yellow FCF (E110), carmoisine (E122), ponceau 4R (E124) and allura red (E129).

The requirement followed research the Food Standards Agency commissioned at the University of Southampton, published in 2007, and has applied since July 2010. It did not ban the six. It made them visible, and many manufacturers reformulated rather than print the line. They have not gone away: sunset yellow (E110) is still in Irn-Bru and in orange squash, and ponceau 4R (E124) turns up in jelly, tinned strawberries and some cured sausage. We go through the evidence in detail on food additives and children's behaviour.

Which are banned, and where

"Banned in the UK" is a slipperier phrase than it looks, because Great Britain and Northern Ireland have followed different additive rules since 2021.

Red 2G (E128) was withdrawn across the UK and EU in 2007, after regulators found it breaks down in the gut into aniline, which the IARC classifies as probably carcinogenic to humans. Finding it on a label today would mean something had gone badly wrong.

Titanium dioxide (E171), the whitener in icing, chewing gum and cake decorations, is the clearest split. The EU stopped permitting it in food after its regulator concluded that DNA damage could not be ruled out and declined to set a safe daily intake. Northern Ireland follows those rules and it has not been permitted there since 2022. It remains on the approved list for Great Britain, where the Food Standards Agency reached a different conclusion. The same bag of sweets can be legal in Cardiff and not in Belfast.

The ones that are not vegetarian, vegan or halal

A short list is animal in origin every time. Three of them rule out a vegetarian diet as well as a vegan one:

• E120 cochineal, the red dye made from insects.
• E441 gelatin, boiled from bones and hides.
• E542 bone phosphate, made from animal bone.

The rest come from an animal without requiring one to be killed, so they are usually fine for vegetarians but not for vegans:

• E901 beeswax.
• E904 shellac, a resin from the lac insect.
• E913 lanolin, from sheep wool.
• E1105 lysozyme, from hen egg white. It also has to be declared as an egg allergen.
• E966 lactitol, made from milk sugar.

The harder cases are the ones where the label simply does not say. Mono- and diglycerides (E471) and the whole E472 family are built from fatty acids that can come from plant oil or animal fat, and the ingredients list is not required to tell you which. The same goes for lecithins, the lactates, glycerol (E422) and several enzymes. On our own list, 8 codes are always animal in origin and 75 more could be either.

So an E-number on its own cannot settle whether a food is suitable. For anyone avoiding animal products, the manufacturer or the certifying body is the only reliable answer, and the pack is the final word.

Common questions

How to read a UK label

Additives are listed by their job first, then a name or a number: "colour: E150d", "preservative: sodium nitrite (E250)", "emulsifier: mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids".

Both forms are legal, and that is the single most useful thing to know about label reading. A pack showing no E-numbers anywhere can contain exactly the same additives, written out as names. "No E-numbers" on the front of a pack is a claim about the typography on the back, not about what is in the food.

Search any code or name above to see what it is, what it does, and what the science says, with the sources. Or start with the ones worth watching.