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Artificial food coloring, which is commonly used to enhance the colors of candies, pastries, soups, and even bread, poses a huge risk to the health of those who eat them. Even health authorities in Austria and Norway have banned the use of artificial food coloring, while European health authorities require warning labels on foods containing synthetic ingredients. In the UK, this warning label warns that children who eat foods containing artificial dyes are at greater risk of developing hyperactive behavior and ADHD. Therefore, using natural food coloring is the only safe and healthy way to make food look more beautiful. Let's take a look at some of the ingredients that can be used to color the following foods!
Natural food coloring ingredients
Yellow and orange colors
For the yellow color, you can use the following materials:
- Yellow gardenia: This pure natural and water-soluble dye is extracted from the madder family of gardenia fruit. It is a yellow powder which can easily be dissolved in water and alcohol, and has good resistance to light and temperature in neutral and weak alkaline medium. It is formed by the processes of crushing, extraction, filtration, purification, concentration, sterilization, spraying and drying.
- Yellow turmeric: this natural material is the root of the plant Curcuma Longa L.. which is soluble in ethanol. It also has coloring ability and is a good anti-heat. This yellow powder will be golden below PH 7 and reddish color above PH7. It can be used to color gum, cakes, seasonings, ice cream, bread, butter, and so on.
- Orange: it has high color value, strong colorability, hue, great thermal stability and light stability, large PH adaptation value, and is rich in vitamin E and rare metal selenium. It is commonly used for food, cosmetics and medicine.
Blue and green colors
For blues and greens, you can use the following materials:
- Gardenia blue: This is a natural food pigment that comes from the gardenia fruit madder family by biological fermentation. If you add this to food, it will turn dark blue. This blue gardenia is also easily dissolved in water, in ethanol solution, and propylene glycol solution. The color is stable at a pH of 4 to 8. It also has good resistance to temperature, but not light.
- Green gardenia: This is a natural pigment extracted from a mixture of blue and yellow gardenia fruit. It can produce light green and dark green colors. It dissolves readily in water and ethanol solutions. It is commonly used for beer, soda pop, juice, jam, candy, cake, jelly, ice cream, bread, etc.
Red and purple
For the red and purple color, you can use the following materials:
- Red cabbage: this is a reddish purple powder that can dissolve in water and acetate solution, but not in oil. It produces a reddish purple color when the PH is less than 6 and an unstable reddish purple at a PH more than 7. It has good stability for heat and light, especially in acidic conditions. This also applies to wine, soft drinks, juices, jams, ice cream, cakes, and so on.
- Red grape skin: This natural color pigment is extracted from the skin of red grapes. This will produce a dark purple color. It is also readily soluble in water and ethanol, but insoluble in anhydrous fat and alcohol. The color stability depends on the PH value. If it is in acidic conditions, it will be red, if normal it will be blue, and dark blue if it is alkaline. It is commonly used for beer, soda pop, juice drinks, jams, candy, and others.
- Purple sweet potato: it is extracted from the locally grown purple tuber. This process is carried out by checking, washing, slicing, digging, filtration, purification, concentration, sterilization, spraying, and drying. This purple sweet potato can produce a purplish red color.