Additives are added to the packaged foods for different reasons varying from increasing shelf life, to provide flavour and texture, increasing nutrition quality or required to manufacture some types of food.
One of the ways to determine the degree of Processing is the number of additives you find in the ingredient list. The higher the number of additives greater is the degree of processing. Additives can be identified by looking for ingredients that begin with’E’ and have a number in them.
It is generally recommended that food that is closer to nature is better hence it is better to choose food products with lesser number of additives.