Citric v tartaric acid in elderflower ..

My sister-in-law Kirsty says you can use tartaric acid as well as citric acid when you are making elderflower drinks, and I began to wonder what is the difference between them. It seems very feeble to be aiming at a healthy diet, and then not knowing anything about additives you choose to put in your food.

Tartaric acid (E334), like citric acid (E330), stops bacteria in its tracks, and they both also give a tart flavour to the finished drink.

I'm not any kind of scientist, so anything much deeper than this goes right over my head ... so much so that, after reading through the various links, I'm making a decision that would probably disgrace a primary school child - I am going to use tartaric acid rather than citric acid, because it seems to be used exclusively as a food and drink additive (it's used in bread- and wine-making), whereas citric acid finds its way into cleaning materials and shampoo, and is apparently the ingredient that does the damage to hair in Sun-in (have your children ever turned their hair green with the Sun-in / swimming combination? you haven't lived!)

The Food Additives and Ingredients Association website says it is produced in collaboration with York University, so I feel inclined to trust it as a starting point. The British Soft Drinks Association (yes, really) gives an overview explanation of the differences. But I'm not sure how much I trust it, because the funding for such a beautiful website probably comes direct from the soft drink giants, so here's Wikipedia on citric acid and tartaric acid.

They are both obviously tried and tested additives, so I suppose in the end, the best guide is taste, with ease of availability coming a pretty close second!