What Everyone Needs To Know About Food Dyes?
Food Dyes play a very important role in foods. We can’t identify or imagine food without color. Color adds great value to the food, making it more attractive, beautiful, and appealing to taste. Natural food dyes that are produced from natural sources like plants, vegetables, and fruits like blueberries are good for health.
In contrast, other chemically synthesized food dyes such as artificial colors are harmful to human health, and their uses are somewhat controlled by government laws. Food dye manufacturing companies should strictly follow rules and guidelines for producing food colors in compliance with to ensure the health and safety of people.
Well, this article covers everything about food dyes, their types, uses, benefits, and safety, and how they have become a part of our daily lives.
What Are Food Dyes?
Food dyes refer to chemical substances that are produced to improve the look and feel of food to make it more attractive by adding artificial color. People have been using coloring agents in foods for hundreds of years, however, artificial color was the first color created and used in food.
Thousands of food dyes have been produced over the years and most of them are found to be toxic. There are a few artificial dyes that are still being used in foods. It is for sure that artificial food dyes are the most preferred dyes over natural food dyes by leading food dye manufacturers as they help in formulating a more vibrant color. Carotenoids, turmeric, anthocyanin, and chlorophyll are some of the most used food dyes in food.
What is Food Coloring?
Food coloring is the process of adding any substances, pigments, or dye to food products to produce the desired color is called food coloring. It is also known as an artificial color. A food coloring agent often comes in various forms like liquid, viscous, gel, pastes, or solid powders.
Types of Food Dyes
1. Liquid Dye
The liquid dye is a type of traditional food coloring, produced from synthetic colorings in the form of liquid. The liquid dye can easily be found in regular grocery stores in a squeezed small plastic bottle. These bottles are often topped with small caps just like gnome hats, allowing you to add or use dye drop by drop for the applications.
2. Gel Paste Dye
Gel paste dye is widely available in the form of concentrated gel or icing color. It is a type of synthetic coloring that includes glycerin, corn syrup base, and some amount of water that make a pretty thick and highly concentrated version of liquid gel color.
3. Natural Food Colorings
Natural food colorings are produced from natural sources such as plants, fruits, and other natural sources and don’t contain any glycerin or corn syrup. For instance, saffron or turmeric is used to formulate yellow color, carrot juice for orange, and beet for red tones. Thus, they are perfect ways to acquire 100% natural and healthy products.
Some other forms of food dyes include Powdered dye and traditional dye. However, as mentioned above dyes are the most used food dyes in a variety of foods.
Food Dyes Uses
Food dye applications are not just limited to food industries but they are widely used in many other areas mentioned below:
- Food dyes are widely used to make food more appealing, attractive, and appetizing.
- Offset color fading is caused by light, air, heat, moisture, and long-term storage.
- Enhance the beauty of colors that occur from nature.
- To correct natural variations in color.
- To give color to colorless and fun foods.
Benefits of Food Dyes
Following are the top benefits of using food dyes.
One of the greatest benefits of food dyes is that it makes food more appealing and attractive. Food dyes don’t have nutritional benefits and are harmful to human health. However, there’s not enough affirmation on this, which supports that everyone should avoid having artificial food dyes. Unhealthy processed foods are one of the biggest sources of food dyes, which impact health negatively.
Safety & Security in Food Dyes
According to the Food Safety and Standards Regulations, 2011, The extraneous addition of coloring matter on the label must be noted- When any article of food is colored with an extraneous coloring matter, the package must be displayed, on the label at the bottom of the ingredient list, one of the following statements both in a letter case and capital letters: Contains Permitted Synthetic Food Colour, Permitted Natural Colour, or Synthetic Food & Permitted Natural Colour.
When using both color and flavor in the product, you must display the combined statement in capital letters just beneath the list of ingredients on the attached label:
- Contains Permitted Synthetic Food Colour with an Added Flavour.
- Contains Permitted Natural Colour with Added Flavour.
- Contains Permitted Synthetic & Natural Food Colour with added Flavour.
Conclusion
Food colors made from natural sources are good for health, while chemically synthesized colorants are not very healthy for health. Government laws should fully enforce the use of chemically synthesized colorants. It is important to mention artificial colors on the labels of food containers whenever they are used.
In some cases, food dyes made from natural sources are however not necessarily healthier than those made from synthetic sources. In the U.S., all foods that contain color additives, natural or synthetic, must meet FDA standards.
To ensure the safety and health of the general public, manufacturing companies and industries should strictly adhere to food laws.
At Hridhan Chem, we are producing high-quality food dyes that meet both ISO and international industry standards. If you are searching for premium quality food colors that are designed with FDA standards in mind, then Hridhan Chem is the right industry to get started with.
