Food Colorings

Food coloring, or color additive, is any dye, pigment, or substance that imparts color when it is added to food or drink. They come in many forms consisting of liquids, powders, gels, and pastes. Food coloring is used in both commercial food production and domestic cooking. Food colorants are also used in a variety of non-food applications, including cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, home craft projects, and medical devices.

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. 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. Color additives are used in foods for many reasons including:

* To make food more attractive, appealing, appetizing, and informative
* Offset color loss due to exposure to light, air, temperature extremes, moisture and storage conditions
* Correct natural variations in color
* Enhance colors that occur naturally
* Provide color to colorless and "fun" foods
* Allow consumers to identify products on sight, like candy flavors or medicine dosages

Regulation

While naturally derived colors are not required to be certified by a number of regulatory bodies throughout the world (including the U.S. FDA), they still need to be approved for use in that country. Food colorings are tested for safety by various bodies around the world and sometimes different bodies have different views on food color safety.

Canadian regulations

Food in Canada cannot be sold with more than:

* 300 ppm of dyes including allura red, amaranth, erythrosine, indigotine, sunset yellow FCF or tartrazine or any combination of these unless specified
* 100 ppm of fast green FCF or brilliant blue FCF or any combination of these
* 300 ppm of allura red, amaranth, erythrosine, indigotine, sunset yellow FCF or tartrazine and fast green FCF or brilliant blue FCF combined
* 150 ppm of ponceau SX dye.

U.S. regulations

The U.S. FDA's permitted colors are classified as subject to certification or exempt from certification in Code of Federal Regulations – Title 21 Part 73 & 74, both of which are subject to rigorous safety standards prior to their approval and listing for use in foods.

* Certified colors are synthetically produced and are used widely because they impart an intense, uniform color, are less expensive, and blend more easily to create a variety of hues. There are nine certified color additives approved for use in the United States. Certified food colors generally do not add undesirable flavors to foods.
*Colors that are exempt from certification include pigments derived from natural sources such as vegetables, minerals, or animals. Nature derived color additives are typically more expensive than certified colors and may add unintended flavors to foods. Examples of exempt colors include annatto, beet extract, caramel, beta-carotene, turmeric and grape skin extract. This list contains substances which may have synthetic origins, such as nature identical beta-carotene.

In the United States, FD&C numbers (which indicate that the FDA has approved the colorant for use in foods, drugs and cosmetics) 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. The food colors are known by E numbers that begin with a 1, such as E100 (turmeric) or E161b (lutein