Food additives

So how widespread are food additives? Particularly the ones that the latest research tells us our kids should avoid at all costs. They are in just about every processed food from bread and spreads to canned goods (once upon a time didn't canning actually eliminate the need for preservatives?), drinks, puddings... Frozen foods even contain them.

I make my own bread. I confess - I do own a bread maker to help things along. All the recipes use surebake instead of regular yeast. It took trial and error to work out the actually quantity of yeast I really needed. It's half. So by omitting the additives I get to buy just yeast (which is cheaper) and use only half the quantity. You also don't need the milk/dried milk. Real bread. Oh -don't expect it to last. It's wonderful on the day and great for toast the next morning but then use it as breadcrumbs as it will be too hard and dry. I wonder how the manufacturers manage to make theirs last 3 or 4 days? Oh that's right ;-)