Where do I buy food additives (not in bulk)?

Question

I occasionally want a pure food additive for various reasons (pure potassium chloride for sports drinks, pure MSG for everything), but I can't find any decent places to get them except amazon.com. Now I'm looking for disodium inosinate, and even Amazon doesn't have that. I expect I'll be looking for weird things like this in the future, so I'm wondering where people buy food additives (besides bulk suppliers).

Asked by Brendan Long

Answer

I'm not sure how helpful I can be but, at least coming from a chemistry lab background, I can say you might run into issues trying to buy food additives in such amount. Things like potassium chloride are easy to get because they have many uses outside of food and aren't really harmful unless you swallow the whole bottle. Many compounds are either obscure, hard to make, or toxic in larger amounts. You can find that many additives are used in very small amounts and if you try and buy them from ie. a chemical supplier they get rather expensive. For example the compound you link to as sold by sigma aldrich (one such supplier) I found here at $32.40 for a lousy 5 grams, and they do not sell to individuals as most chemical suppliers don't.

You will naturally have better luck the more common a given compound is. With that said you might have success on eBay (though naturally be skeptical of anything you buy, especially stuff you're ingesting!). I know I have seen quite a few things on there including food-related such as benzoate salts (preservative), saccharin sodium (artifical sweetener), or food dyes. Don't forget to make sure anything you buy is USP grade (meaning it is certified specifically for food), as I believe that this imposes certain restrictions such as heavy metal content that might not be as restrictive even in "pure" amounts if it's meant for lab use as opposed to general consumption.

Also, you might have success looking up the uses for the additive in question and looking for stores that cater to them. As a rushed example, I found sodium EDTA available from a photography supplier, which I have seen the mixed sodium/calcium salt listed as an ingredient in some items. This really depends on how useful the additive is of course!

Maybe someone else can help you from a different perspective.

Answered by Kryptic

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