E322ii - Partially hydrolyzed lecithin
What it is and how it is used
Lecithin is the phospholipid fraction of a fat — most commercially from soya, increasingly from sunflower, and traditionally from egg yolk. Partially hydrolysed lecithin is that material treated with an enzyme (a phospholipase) that clips one fatty acid tail off some of the phospholipid molecules, converting them into lysophospholipids.
Removing a tail makes the molecule markedly more water-loving, and that changes what it can do. Standard lecithin is best at holding water into oil; the partially hydrolysed form is better at holding oil into water, and it tolerates heat and acidity that would break a standard-lecithin emulsion. It is the form reached for in bakery, where dough goes through both.
Foods commonly containing it
Bread and other bakery products, margarines and fat spreads, instant powders and dried milk products, dressings and sauces, and chocolate and confectionery coatings.
Safety summary
Lecithins are authorised in Great Britain as E 322 and sit in Group I, permitted at quantum satis. Worth being precise about the number: the GB specification is a single entry, “E 322 LECITHINS”, which expressly covers hydrolysed products as well as untreated ones. There is no separate E 322(ii) entry in the Great Britain list — the “(ii)” suffix comes from international product databases, and the substance it describes falls inside the E 322 specification.
EFSA re-evaluated lecithins and found no safety concern, with no numerical ADI considered necessary.
Allergen note: soya is one of the 14 allergens that must be declared under UK labelling law, so soya lecithin appears on ingredient lists as “soya lecithin” or with soya emphasised, not merely as E 322.