Food coloring has a centuries-old tradition, just think of the use of coloring spices (e.g. saffron), and then in the 19th-20th century the use of coloring substances became an established custom.
To intensify the color of food, the food industry used a wide variety of substances without thinking, primarily cheap and easy-to-produce artificial dyes, which had the additional advantage of being able to achieve a high coloring effect in small quantities.
Nowadays, however, mainly due to health concerns, this trend has changed and the use of dyes is shifting towards so-called natural dyes, e.g. using coloring substances obtained from plants or animals – although their extraction is still carried out using chemical substances, so their “naturalness” may be a matter of debate.
Accordingly, the use of natural dyes is slowly replacing the use of colored foods in the spirit of a health-conscious lifestyle.
1.) What are colored foods?
Simply put, colored foods are foods that have coloring properties – i.e. vegetables, fruits and edible plants that are rich in pigments, e.g. pumpkin, carrots or blackberries.
The coloring pigments are extracted from these foods not chemically, but with the help of enzymes or physically, i.e. during washing, chopping, drying, etc. and water is preferably used as a solvent.
Given that the coloring pigments are extracted physically and not by extraction, i.e. by removing them from the food, they retain their original properties as a food, i.e. their calorie, fat, protein, etc. content.
Colored foods are typically manufactured in the form of intensely colored concentrates or powders. Since, as we wrote, these are still foods, so they are used as food ingredients in the product, i.e. they are still listed on the food label and are not subject to usage limits.
2.) What properties does a food coloring have?
When a consumer purchases a product, they expect its color and taste not to change during the expiration date – which can be a big challenge with the use of food coloring alone.
In the case of food coloring, it is possible that its properties may change greatly, either in terms of color or the effect on the finished product’s taste, depending on how the consumer stores the food (e.g., exposed to light, large temperature fluctuations), which is difficult to “calculate” in advance.
Since food coloring contains other substances in addition to the pigments that give the coloring property, they can also affect the chemical and physical characteristics of the finished product. (E.g. food coloring containing acids can make sugar sticky in the finished product.)
Or the heat effect of a finished product containing food coloring (e.g. pasteurization) – because either the properties of the food coloring change, or it reacts with other ingredients of the finished product – can be significantly different in color than it was before heat treatment – i.e. the heat stability of color pigments is extremely unique, but they generally require careful heat treatment.
In general, it can also be said that the presence of oxygen – either during the production of the finished product or during packaging – has a negative effect on the stability of certain (color) pigments (e.g. red), i.e. essentially leads to “oxidation”, fading of the product. Accordingly, the amount of oxygen that enters the finished product during its life cycle must be reduced, e.g. by using multilayer plastics or, where possible, glass packaging.
Sunlight can have the same effect on colored food, meaning that it loses its original color and intensity, so the use of non-transparent, but colored, and thus light-filtering packaging comes to the fore.
3.) Food coloring and colored food, aren’t they the same thing?
No, food coloring is a so-called additive and there are separate legal regulations regarding its use, which must be taken into account in addition to food law regulations.
Colored food – as its name implies – is food, meaning the regulations applicable to that food must be taken into account.
Would you like to know what legal classification the substance you want to use to color your food falls under? Are you interested in how to indicate its use on the finished product? Contact us for legal assistance!