Monitaditivos is the name of the ongoing program that aims to monitor the intake and occurrence of food additives in Portugal.
The process of monitoring food additive intake in Portugal has been carried out at INSA since at least 2010, and its implementation is a legal obligation for each Member State of the European Union. This monitoring is one of INSA’s responsibilities, as defined in its Statutes.
This program is divided into two main activities:
- Monitoring the intake of food additives by the school-age population;
- Monitoring the occurrence of food additives and flavorings in foods available on the national market.
Since its conception, this initiative, named Monitaditivos, has been developed and tested through several pilot projects and, since 2022, has been applied in schools on the mainland, targeting adolescents between 11 and 17 years of age.
In 2025, working together with the Directorate-General for Food and Veterinary Affairs and with food business operators and their associations, the transmission of occurrence data for a set of food additives and flavorings to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) began.
More information about this program can be found in the seminar “Ingestão de aditivos alimentares – monitorização em Portugal” (in Portuguese), on Youtube: https://youtu.be/21oRsYwzWrI?si=9zsNsJqjGWFfTp4q