To use all functions of this page, please activate cookies in your browser.
With an accout for my.chemeurope.com you can always see everything at a glance – and you can configure your own website and individual newsletter.
- My watch list
- My saved searches
- My saved topics
- My newsletter
A food coloring is any substance that is added to food to change its color. It is sometimes used in cooking.
Additional recommended knowledge
Purpose of food coloring
People associate certain colors with certain flavors, and the color of food can influence the perceived flavor, in anything from candy to wine.  For this reason, food manufacturers add dyes to their products. Sometimes the aim is to simulate a color that is perceived by the consumer as natural, such as adding red coloring to glacé cherries (which would otherwise be beige), but sometimes it is for effect, like the green ketchup that Heinz launched in 2000.
While most consumers are aware that foods with bright or unnatural colors (such as the green ketchup mentioned above or children's cereals such as Froot Loops) likely contain food coloring, far fewer people know that seemingly "natural" foods such as oranges and salmon are sometimes also dyed to mask natural variations in color. Color variation in foods throughout the seasons and the effects of processing and storage often make color addition commercially advantageous to maintain the color expected or preferred by the consumer. Some of the primary reasons include:
Food colorings are tested for safety by various bodies around the world and sometimes different bodies have different views on food color safety. In the United States, FD&C (generally indicates that the FDA has approved the colorant for use in Foods, Drugs and Cosmetics) numbers are given to approved synthetic food dyes that do not exist in nature, while in the European Union, E numbers are used for all additives approved in food applications.
Most other countries have their own regulations and list of food colors which can be used in various applications, including maximum daily intake limits.
Natural food dyes
Caramel coloring is found in cola products. It is made from caramelized sugar. It is also used in cosmetics. Annatto is a reddish-orange dye made from the seed of the Achiote. Chlorella is green, and derived from algae. Cochineal is a red dye derived from cochineal insects. Beet juice, turmeric, saffron, paprika are also used as colorants.
In the USA, the following seven artificial colorings are permitted in food (the most common in bold) as of 2007:
Dyes and lakes
In the United States, certifiable color additives are available for use in food as either "dyes" or "lakes".
Dyes dissolve in water, but are not soluble in oil. Dyes are manufactured as powders, granules, liquids or other special purpose forms. They can be used in beverages, dry mixes, baked goods, confections, dairy products, pet foods and a variety of other products. Dyes also have side effects which lakes do not, including the fact that large amounts of dyes ingested can color stools.
Lakes are the combination of dyes and insoluble material. Lakes tint by dispersion. Lakes are not oil soluble, but are oil dispersible. Lakes are more stable than dyes and are ideal for coloring products containing fats and oils or items lacking sufficient moisture to dissolve dyes. Typical uses include coated tablets, cake and donut mixes, hard candies and chewing gums, lipsticks, soaps, shampoos, talc etc.
Because food dyes are generally safer to use than normal artistic dyes and pigments, some artists have used food coloring as a means of making pictures, especially in forms such as bodypainting. Food coloring can serve as a means of dyeing fabric, however it is not washfast when used on cotton, hemp and other plant fibres, although it can be fixed on Nylon and animal fibres.
|This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Food_coloring". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia.|