Dietary life of Korean population was greatly improved by the increased food production, enlarged food processing and betterment of food distribution system during the last three decades. On the other hand, food pollution issues have arisen from the increased use of chemicals and advancements in analytical techniques and toxicological information. The health risk of hazardous substances in Korean diet was estimated to be in the decreasing order of heavy metals>pesticide residues>food additives>mycotoxins>radionuclides>PCBs whereas consumers do not recognize it in the same order. It is needed to evaluate the food safety more accurately based on scientific evidences and to adopt reasonable regulatory measures in Korea for the benefits of people's health and national interest.

Food additives are minor components which are used to enhance nutritive or sensory values, and to improve shelf life of foods. In foods, natural additives are preferred over artificial or synthetic materials because of concern on food safety. Many biotechnological techniques have been applied to the production of food additives since the biotechnology has been utilized to prodyce many flavor components such as glutamate, 5'-nucleotides, esters, 2,3-bytadione, pyrazines, terpenes, and lactones. Natural flavors, fragrances, sweetners, and colorants can be produced by plant cell culture. Many lactic acid bacteria produce bacteriocins such as nisin or diplococcin. These bacteriocins are used as safe preservatives in foods and many researches on the improvenment of bacteriocin productivity by genetic engineering are in progress.

A review on sweetener has been conducted. Enzymes are utilized preferentially to break-down or synthesize stevioside, MGGR and oligo-saccharides. these result in change or modification of the functions of sweetener. Originally, the sweetener was used to obtain energy, add sweet taste and for rheological properties. Recently, the physiological functions of the sweetener have been studied considerably. As the oligo-sacchride is found to function as substance of physiological activities, more researh will be carried out using enzyme to discover new functions of sweetener.

The meanings, classification, and regulatory status of 'natural food colorants' are discussed. Nowadays the technological advances for processing Cochineal color is flourishing here and aboard, makes highly concentrated products (e.g., 95% Carminic acid) is comercially available. Application of carminic acid for a food system needs target-specific formulation, mixing with alumn, tartaric acid, and other salts to stabilize the color hue in food system. On the other hand, carmine, the aluminium-lake of carminic acid, is more convenient product to be used and would give more strong color. Of these reasons Carmine is much popular product than Cochineal extract in Western and European countries. We insist that carmine should be also certified as natural colorant together with Cochineal extract in Korea. Authors expect that several kinds of anthraquinone colorant (Lac and Kermes) would be introduced in Korean market in near furture.