Food colors are the additives that have led the most turbulent life. A google search of the different headings shows that food colors are by far the most commenterd subject and there are many reasons for this.
Food colors have often been used to mislead consumers about the product they were eating. This has been and remains one of the main reasons for food colors to be in use today. History shows numerous examples of poisonous colors that have been used to enhance or disguise foods with. Cancer and Allergies are the most prominent problems food colors can lead to.
Good reasons to use food color
There are several reasons for the use of colors in food. The natural available colors in food are, or can be, quite unstable and nature does not always live up to the ISO9001 standards in consistency in color. The colors often differs quite a lot even within the same food group.
Many consumers will look at the color variations in natural foods and discard them as imperfect or see them as having quality problems. The simple adjustment of the color to a uniform color will i many cases correct this problem.
Product diversity with food colors
Food colors are one of the easiest methods to creating new products. Just think of a bottle of sodawater. If you have your sugar mixture, a flavour and the color green then you have a green soda, if you instead add the color red. By magic now you have an entire new product.
The argument is less that the product with the color signals a connection to something that are natural and more of a means to get more products with the same ingredients.
The most common use of colors is to hide something else. If the product looses color as it lies on the shelf extra color can be added. If you look back then there were in the 19th century a case in England where consumers refused to buy milk that was without color. They had connected the white milk with good milk. The real case was that a white color had been added in order to conceal that the cream had been removed or that water had been added.
Probably because they really can be used to mislead consumers or because of toxic dyes are used to falsify or embellish food, such as. case with Sudan dye in spice mixtures. But often there are several quite legitimate reasons why one chooses to color food. First, nature’s own colors are not always stable, and often they can not deliver exactly the same shade every time. The various (natural) variation in color strength and quality will be perceived by consumers as a quality defects. By correcting with added color will no longer be the case. Our own view of the food plays thus also favor when manufacturers produce the products.
Dyes in foods creates an assortment
Dyes are also used to produce a so-called range. So green soda and red sausages not made to the product must look like something it is not, but simply that it can stand out from the crowd. The color will become part of the mark.
These examples are what might be called legitimate uses of dyes in food, thereby not to say that you have to like it. Where color added, not only to achieve color uniformity, but to hide other errors or defects in the product, such as taste or nutritional value (or in worst cases, the food is spoiled), then the addition will no longer be legalized – it is the unfortunate use of dyes in food.
Dyes are regulated
Although the introduction of the positive list have been assured that the dyes investigated as well as other additives, there has been constant political debate about the use of dyes. In 1984 it was adopted by parliament that so-called basic foods were free from dyes. Simultaneously, certain quality of meat products adopted, so that there is a quantity of meat products as a minimum, contain, and maximum limits on the amount of fat, flour, soy protein and water. As always, there are terms of meat, exemptions regarding the use of dyes. One type of salami must, for example not contain dyes, but another type salami can contain food color. The reason for these exceptions is that they represent a tiny fraction of the total market, and many of them have an impact on exports. Furthermore, it also proved that the red sausages sell well, though we all know know it is not a natural color of a hot-dog sausage.
The natural dyes in food
Several foods and spices such as beetroot and curry, are naturally colored, and can be used to color and flavor your food with. Applied to the way they are treated not as additives. Used as the coloring spices should not be special reason to worry about it, but if you try to remove other characteristics and isolate the color in order to use this alone, it’s another talk. So it is an application which may be characterized as additive. One thing is that you are using turmeric (a portion of curry) for dinner, something different is when the color (curcumin E 100) is used to color the ice. Applied in this way separates the color is not from the synthetic colors.
Dyes can be misleading
When colors are used outside their natural context, it can be just as misleading as the synthetic dyes, and in principles, they differ health either. One of the main arguments for using natural dyes as additives in foods is that we’ve used them for ages, but when substances are used outside their natural context, the intake could exceed what else is “natural”, and then count the experience otherwise we have made ourselves with the dye no longer.
The EU has not assessed the natural colors itself
EU Scientific Committee for Food (replaced by the European Food Safety Authority, which provides independent advice on all aspects of food safety to include all EU member states) has not assessed these natural dyes in itself. They said however that the use of natural dyes was acceptable as long as they are used in their natural context. That is, as long as only colors found naturally in foods. It is not okay to isolate a color from the example. flowers and then use this color as an additive to foods. An example could be carotene (beta-carotene helps to give carrots their color). Carotene was derived from certain algae, the carotene is the same as E160a, but all the other substances present in the algae can not know much. It was therefore also relatively long time before this dye was approved by the Expert Committee. Another application of this particular type of algae was as health food product (“natural vitamins”). The reality was that the algae had not previously used as a food color, but was consumed by people in far greater quantities as health food.
EU set for each group of dyes which foods must be used as a base to extract colors from. Use of natural dyes in larger quantities than those naturally present in foods requires a special assessment before they can be applied.
Color entries numbered E 100 – E 180th Also often used nitrite (E 249 and E 250) and nitrate (E 251 and E 252) as these have a color stabilizing effect on meat products. In addition, used iron compounds (eg ferrous gluconate, E 579) to give olives their black color and stannochlorid (E 512) stabilizes the white color of asparagus in glass jars.
Colours
E100 Curcumin
E101 (i) Riboflavin
(ii) Riboflavin-5′-phosphate
E102 Tartrazine
E104 Quinoline yellow
E110 Sunset Yellow FCF; Orange Yellow S
E120 Cochineal; Carminic acid; Carmines
E122 Azorubine; Carmoisine
E123 Amaranth
E124 Ponceau 4R; Cochineal Red A
E127 Erythrosine
E128 Red 2G
E129 Allura Red AC
E131 Patent Blue V
E132 lndigotine; Indigo Carmine
E133 Brilliant Blue FCF
E140 Chlorophylls and chlorophyllins
E141 Copper complexes of chlorophyll and chlorophyllins
E142 Green S
E150a Plain caramel
E150b Caustic sulphite caramel
E150c Ammonia caramel
E150d Sulphite ammonia caramel
E151 Brilliant Black BN; Black PN
E153 Vegetable carbon
E154 Brown FK
E155 Brown HT
E160a Carotenes
E160b Annatto; Bixin; Norbixin
E160c Paprika extract; Capsanthian; Capsorubin
E160d Lycopene
E160e Beta-apo-8′-carotenal (C30)
E160f Ethyl ester of beta-apo-8′-carotenoic acid (C30)
E161b Lutein
E161g Canthaxanthin
E162 Beetroot Red; Betanin
E163 Anthocyanins
E170 Calcium carbonate
E171 Titanium dioxide
E172 Iron oxides and hydroxides
E173 Aluminium
E174 Silver
E175 Gold
E180 Litholrubine BK
