Food coloring

Dyes of various colors (most commonly blue, green, red and yellow) used to tint foods such as frostings and candies. The most familiar form of food coloring is liquid, which comes in little bottles available at any supermarket. Food coloring paste, which comes in a wider variety of colors, can usually only be found in specialty stores such as cake-decorating shops. It's particularly suitable for mixtures that do not combine readily with liquid, such as white chocolate. A little of any food coloring goes a long way, so it's best to begin with only a drop or two, blending it into the mixture being tinted before adding more.

Humans have always used the color of a food to form judgments about its desirability. The act of eating (and deciding what to eat) is a multi-sensory experience, synthesizing perceptions of sight, taste, smell, and touch. Color provides visual information about a food's quality and condition, and influences the perception of its flavor.

In nature, color is determined by a food's inherent qualities, indicating types of flavor, and degrees of sweetness, ripeness, or decay. However, humans have contrived to add or change the natural color in foods from very early times and for a variety of reasons—for aesthetic purposes, to increase appetite appeal, for symbolic effect, to make a less desirable food seem more desirable, and to mask defects.

From ancient times, wide varieties of food colorants were derived from natural sources—plant, animal, or mineral. This changed in the middle of the nineteenth century with the discovery of synthetic dyes that soon found their way into food. These synthetics were, in general, less expensive as well as more stable, controllable, and intense in hue than natural color sources. Since that time, the safety and acceptable use of food colorants, both natural and synthetic, remain controversial topics, eliciting debate, continual scientific study, and periodic legislative action.

History of Coloring in Food

There is ample evidence that early civilizations introduced color into their food. Ancient Egyptians colored food yellow with saffron, and saffron is mentioned in Homer's Iliad, dating from 700 B.C.E. Pliny the Elder relates that wines were artificially colored in 400 B.C.E. Wealthy Romans ate white bread that had been whitened by adding alum to the flour.

In the great houses of medieval Europe, cooks employed plant extracts of many hues. Along with the period's painting and stained glass, the cuisine of the late Gothic period was informed by rich and ornate color. Parti-colored dishes, jewel-toned cordials, and shimmering jellies were colored red, purple, blue, green, and yellow. Saffron had migrated from Persia as far as England by the mid-fourteenth century, and indigo, turnsole, alkanet (borage root), red saunders (a powdered wood), marigold, turmeric, safflower, parsley, spinach, fruits, and flower petal extracts commonly colored the foods of the wealthy.

In the early Renaissance (1470–1530), a common belief in Europe, based on Arabic ideas, was that color in food not only indicated nutritional value, but also inherent medicinal power connected to spiritual, celestial substances. Eating sweet red grapes produced full rich blood, black food like pepper or fungi induced melancholy, and coloring foods golden promoted divine solar healing.

In the sixteenth century the New World food colorants annatto, paprika, brazilwood, and cochineal arrived in Europe. In Mexico in 1518 Hernando Cortés observed the Aztecs cultivating the tiny cochineal insects (Dactylopus coccus costa) that fed on red cactus berries. These insects were gathered by hand and ground into pigment, requiring 70,000 carcasses to make a pound. By 1600 approximately 500,000 pounds of cochineal were shipped annually to Spain.

Table 1

It was common during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to employ food colorants to disguise inferior products, and the colorants used were frequently harmful (although natural) substances. In 1820 Frederick Accum described flour whitened with alum, pickles colored green with copper sulphate, and cheeses tinted with red lead and red mercuric sulfide. By the mid-nineteenth century, black lead, Prussian blue, lead chromate, copper carbonate, vermillion, and copper arsenite were also used to color food.

The British chemist Sir William Henry Perkin created the first synthetic dye, mauveine, in 1856 by oxidizing aniline. By the end of the century, eighty synthetic dyes colored foods, and coal tar derivatives were the principle source of synthesized dyes. Americans and Europeans were consuming varieties of unregulated, artificially colored food, including jellies, butter, cheese, ice cream, sausage, pasta, and wine.

Food Coloring Regulation

Government attempts to regulate coloring agents in food have had a long history. There was a 1396 edict in Paris against coloring butter. In 1574 French authorities in Bourges prohibited the use of color to simulate eggs in pastries, and Amsterdam forbade annatto for coloring butter in 1641. Denmark listed colors permitted for food coloring in 1836, and Germany's Color Act of 1887 prohibited harmful colors in food. A report to the British Medical Association in Toronto in 1884 resulted in the Adulteration Act, the first list of prohibited food additives. Australia passed the Pure Food Act in 1905.

The United States Food and Drug Act of 1906 restricted synthetic food colors to those that could be tested as safe. Of the eighty colors in use, only seven were approved as certified colors. In 1938 the Food, Drug, and Cosmetics (FD&C) Act approved fifteen dyes for use in food, drugs, and cosmetics and assigned color numbers instead of their common names (thus, amaranth became Red No. 2).

Government and consumers' concerns regarding food additives intensified in the 1950s with new scientific findings. In 1960 the U.S. Congress passed the Color Additives Amendment to the FD&C Act, which placed the burden of establishing safety on the food manufacturing industry and created a new category, "color additives exempt from certification." This includes both "natural colors" and "nature-identical" colors (those synthetically made but chemically identical to natural colors, like beta-carotene and canthaxanthin). The Delaney Clause prohibited any color additive that could be shown to induce cancer in humans or animals.

Since the 1970s the inclusion of colorants in food has received considerable scrutiny based primarily on concerns regarding the carcinogenic properties of colorants. In 1992 a U.S. court decision interpreted the Delaney Clause to mean that zero levels of carcinogens are permissible. With further research findings, certified colors continue to be delisted.

In response to increased consumer perception that natural colorants are safer, manufacturers have moved toward more natural and less synthetic colorants in food. However, the term "natural," as it pertains to colors, has never been legally defined and has no universally accepted definition. In addition, a small percentage of the population demonstrates sensitivity or allergic reactions to some natural colorants such as cochineal. Currently, consumer groups advocate the minimized use of food colorants, as well as a detailed listing of specific colorants on food labels.

Bibliography

Albala, Ken. Eating Right in the Renaissance. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

Bober, Phyllis Pray. Art, Culture, and Cuisine: Ancient and Medieval Gastronomy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

"Colorants." In Foods and Food Production Encyclopedia, edited by Douglas M. Considine and Glenn D. Considine, pp. 471–474. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1982.

"Coloring of Food." In Foods and Nutrition Encyclopedia, edited by Audrey H. Ensminger, M. E. Ensminger, James E. Konlande, and John R. K. Robson, vol. 1, pp. 458–461. Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press, 1994.

Dalby, Andrew. Dangerous Tastes: The Story of Spices. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.

Farrer, K. T. H. "Food Additives." In The Cambridge World History of Food, edited by Kenneth F. Kiple and Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas, vol. 2. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Gullett, Elizabeth A. "Color and Food." In Encyclopedia of Food Science and Technology, edited by Y. H. Hui, vol. 1. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1992.

Hunter, Beatrice Trum. "What Are Natural Colors?" Consumers' Research 82, issue 8 (August 1999): 20–25.

Marmion, Daniel M. Handbook of U.S. Colorants for Foods, Drugs, and Cosmetics. New York: Wiley, 1984.

Peterson, T. Sarah. Acquired Taste: The French Origins of Modern Cooking. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994.

Watson, R. H. J. "The Importance of Colour in Food Psychology." In Natural Colours for Food and Other Uses, edited by J. N. Counsell, pp. 27–37. London: Applied Science Publishers, 1981.

—MM Pack

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: a digestible substance used to give color to food
  Synonyms: coloring, colouring, food colouring, food color, food colour

Food portal

Food coloring spreading on a thin water film.

A food coloring (colouring) is any substance that is added to food or drink to change its color. Food coloring is used both in commercial food production and in domestic cooking. Due to its safety and general availability, food coloring is also used in a variety of non-food applications, for example in home craft projects and educational settings.^{[citation needed]}

Contents 1 Purpose of food coloring 2 Regulation 3 Natural food dyes 4 Artificial coloring in United States 4.1 Current seven 4.2 Delisted 5 Dyes and lakes 6 Other uses 7 Criticism and health implications 8 References 9 External links 10 See also

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. ^[1] 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 food 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.^[2] 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:

• Offsetting color loss due to light, air, extremes of temperature, moisture, and storage conditions.
• Masking natural variations in color.
• Enhancing naturally occurring colors.
• Providing identity to foods.
• Protecting flavors and vitamins from damage by light.
• Decorative or artistic purposes such as cake icing.

Regulation

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, both synthetic and natural, that are 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 colors are not required to be tested by a number of regulatory bodies throughout the world, including the United States FDA. The FDA lists "color additives exempt from certification" for food in subpart A of the Code of Federal Regulations - Title 21 Part 73. However, this list contains substances which may have synthetic origins.

Natural food dyes

A growing number of natural food dyes are being commercially produced, partly due to consumer concerns surrounding synthetic dyes. Some examples include:

• Caramel coloring, made from caramelized sugar, used in cola products and also in cosmetics.
• Annatto, a reddish-orange dye made from the seed of the Achiote.
• A green dye made from chlorella algae.
• Cochineal, a red dye derived from the cochineal insect, Dactylopius coccus.
• Betanin extracted from beets.
• turmeric
• saffron
• paprika
• Elderberry juice

To ensure reproducibility, the colored components of these substances are often provided in highly purified form, and for increased stability and convenience, they can be formulated in suitable carrier materials (solid and liquid).

Artificial coloring in United States

Seven dyes were initially approved under the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, but several have been delisted and replacements have been found. ^[3]

Current seven

In the USA, the following seven artificial colorings are permitted in food (the most common in bold) as of 2007^[update]:

• FD&C Blue No. 1 - Brilliant Blue FCF, E133 (Blue shade)
• FD&C Blue No. 2 - Indigotine, E132 (Dark Blue shade)
• FD&C Green No. 3 - Fast Green FCF, E143 (Bluish green shade)
• FD&C Red No. 40 - Allura Red AC, E129 (Red shade)
• FD&C Red No. 3 - Erythrosine, E127 (Pink shade) ^[4]
• FD&C Yellow No. 5 - Tartrazine, E102 (Yellow shade)
• FD&C Yellow No. 6 - Sunset Yellow FCF, E110 (Orange shade)

The above are known as "Primary Colors", when they are mixed to produce other colors, those colors are then known as "Secondary Colors".

Delisted

• FD&C Red No. 2 - Amaranth (dye)
• FD&C Red No. 4 ^[5]
• FD&C Red No. 32‎ was used to color Florida oranges. ^{[3] [5]}
• FD&C Orange No. 1, was one of the first water soluble dyes to be commercialized, and one of seven original food dyes allowed under the Pure Food and Drug Act of June 30, 1906.^{[3] [5]}
• FD&C Orange No. 2‎ was used to color Florida oranges. ^[3]
• FD&C Yellows No. 1, 2, 3, and 4 ^[5]
• FD&C Violet No. 1 ^[5]

Dyes and lakes

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.

Other uses

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 body-painting. Food colorings can be used to dye fabric, but are usually not washfast when used on cotton, hemp and other plant fibres. Some food dyes can be fixed on Nylon and animal fibers. Red food dye is often used as theatrical blood.

Criticism and health implications

Though past research showed no correlation between Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and food dyes,^[6][7] new studies now point to synthetic preservatives and artificial coloring agents as aggravating ADD & ADHD symptoms, both in those affected by these disorders and in the general population.^[8][9] Older studies were inconclusive quite possibly due to inadequate clinical methods of measuring offending behavior. Parental reports were more accurate indicators of the presence of additives than clinical tests.^[10] Several major studies show academic performance increased and disciplinary problems decreased in large non-ADD student populations when artificial ingredients, including artificial colors, were eliminated from school food programs.^[11][12]

• Norway banned all products containing coal tar and coal tar derivatives in 1978. New legislation lifted this ban in 2001 after EU regulations. As such, many FD&C approved colorings have been banned.
• Tartrazine causes hives in less than 0.01% of those exposed to it.^[2]
• Erythrosine is linked to thyroid tumors in rats.^[13]
• Cochineal, also known as carmine, is derived from insects and therefore is neither vegan nor vegetarian. It has also been known to cause severe, even life-threatening, allergic reactions in rare cases. ^[14]

This criticism originated during the 1950s. In effect, many foods that used dye (such as red velvet cake) became less popular.

References

1. ^ Jeannine Delwiche (2004). "The impact of perceptual interactions on perceived flavor". Food Quality and Preference 15: 137–146. doi:10.1016/S0950-3293(03)00041-7. 
2. ^ ^{a b} "FDA/CFSAN Food Color Facts". Food and Drug Administration. http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~lrd/colorfac.html. Retrieved on 2006-09-07. 
3. ^ ^{a b c d} "News of Food; U.S. May Outlaw Dyes Used to Tint Oranges and Other Foods". New York Times. January 19, 1954, Tuesday. "The use of artificial colors to make foods more attractive to the eye may be sharply curtailed by action of the United States Food and Drug Administration. Three of the most extensively used coal tar dyes are being considered for removal from the Government's list of colors certified as safe for internal and external use and consumption." 
4. ^ "Red No. 3 and Other Colorful Controversies". U.S. Food and Drug Administration. http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/CONSUMER/CON00063.html. Retrieved on 2007-08-26. "FDA terminated the provisional listings for FD&C Red No. 3 on January 29, 1990, at the conclusion of its review of the 200 straight colors on the 1960 provisional list. Commonly called erythrosine, FD&C Red No. 3 is a tint that imparts a watermelon-red color and was one of the original seven colors on Hesse's list." 
5. ^ ^{a b c d e} "Food coloring". Encyclopædia Britannica. http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-9034796. Retrieved on 2007-08-21. "Among the colours that have been “delisted,” or disallowed, in the United States are FD&C Orange No. 1; FD&C Red No. 32; FD&C Yellows No. 1, 2, 3, and 4; FD&C Violet No. 1; and FD&C Reds No. 2 and 4. Many countries with similar food colouring controls (including Canada and Great Britain) also ban the use of Red No. 40, and Yellow No. 5 is also undergoing testing." 
6. ^ Wilens TE, Biederman J, Spencer TJ. Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder across the lifespan. Annual Review of Medicine, 2002:53:113-131
7. ^ The MTA Cooperative Group. A 14-month randomized clinical trial of treatment strategies for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Archives of General Psychiatry, 1999;56:1073-1086
8. ^ Food additives and hyperactive behaviour in 3-year-old and 8/9-year-old children in the community: a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial”, Lancet, Sept 2007
9. ^ 1997 Graduate Student Research Project conducted at the University of South Florida. Author- Richard W. Pressinger M.Ed.
10. ^ "Food Additives May Affect Kids' Hyperactivity", WebMD Medical News, May 24, 2004.
11. ^ A different kind of school lunch", PURE FACTS October 2002
12. ^ The Impact of a Low Food Additive and Sucrose Diet on Academic Performance in 803 New York City Public Schools, Schoenthaler SJ, Doraz WE, Wakefield JA, Int J Biosocial Res., 1986, 8(2); 185-195
13. ^ Jpn J Cancer Res. 1988 Mar; 79(3):314-9
14. ^ "Bugs in your snacks." The Week. Jan 23, 2009

External links

• Food coloring at Encyclopædia Britannica
• FDA/CFSAN Food Color Facts
• Natural Food Colors (Food-Info)

See also

• Azo compound
• Color retention agent
• E number
• Food additive

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