The colour of your food plays an essential role by visually stimulating your appetite. But have you ever fascinated where these colours come from? Let’s take a closer look.

Why Is Colour Added To Food?

• Coloured foods are generally considered to be inferior in quality and hence colours are added.
• Colours can also protect vitamins and flavors that can be affected by sunlight during storage.
• By using food colouring, we can enhance the natural color of a plate and introduce decorative colors in other foods.
• Food colour can affect perceived taste.

Types of Food - Natural and Synthetic Colours:

There are two types of food colours: Synthetic Food Colours and Natural Food Colours. Not surprisingly, natural colours are a better option because they are derived entirely from plants. Natural colours generally appear less vibrant than artificial colours. However, it does not determine the taste of your food.

Natural Food Colour:

Natural Food Colours is any dye, pigment or any other substance acquired from a vegetable or animal mineral that is capable of colouring food or medicine. Colours come from a wide variety of sources such as seeds, fruits, vegetables, algae and pests. Grass, beet root and turmeric are some of the natural sources from which colours are extracted.

Know Your Natural Colours:

• Red, Blue and Purple: Derived from anthocyanin found in beet, raspberries and red cabbage.
• Green: derived from chlorophyll, a green pigment found in all leaves and stems.
• Yellow, Orange, Red: procured from carotenoids found in apricots, carrots and tomatoes.

Synthetic Food Colour:

They are also called artificial colours. These are manufactured by chemical reaction and are commonly used in the food and pharmaceutical industries. Some of the usual food colours are Tartrazine, Sunset Yellow, Amaranth, Allure Red, Quinoline Yellow, Brilliant Blue and Indigo Carmine.

Synthetic or Natural:

Due to consumer concerns around synthetic colours, there is an inclination towards promoting natural colours. Certified synthetic colours are popular because they are less expensive, but they are also effective in giving a rich, uniform color. They can blend easily to give a variety of colours. The use of Synthetic Food Colours is gradually decreasing in India after realizing their harmful effects. Given the relatively high cost of natural colours, it seems that the transition from synthetic colours is an extremely slow process.

Regulation

Whether it is natural or synthetic, the main thing is to meet the desired specifications of the product as prescribed by the regulation. There is a set of rules as per the FSSAI-Indian Regulatory Body for the use of food colours in various foods. Even if there is an inclination towards natural products, if the desired specifications are not met, it serves no purpose.