3GE Collection on Food Science: Colour in Food

A person can’t live without food, even in the modern world, since it has always been considered one of the most essential necessities. As with other necessities, food has also changed to meet changing tastes and eating habits. Some have developed new recipes, blends, and even flavors that exemplify the eating experience. New processed and ready-to-eat meals are also available for those who are always on the go or want fast food. In many countries, food colors are widely used in order to enhance the visual sensory quality of food, thereby increasing consumer demand. We use color to tell us what to expect, whether we are buying fresh vegetables from a market stall, ready meals in a supermarket, eating at home, or eating in a five-star restaurant.

This E-Collection on Color in Food considers the techniques that have, over the years, been employed to modify the color of our food, and the interactions of these techniques with questions of safety and nutrition. In order to make our food brightly colored, some questionable inorganic and organic chemicals were used. We still use a limited number of synthetic dyes in our food today, but health concerns and a general consumer push to switch to "natural" colors have led to a shift in how food is colored. It appears that azo dyes and their chemical cousins have a limited future on supermarket shelves, given the proliferation of products that boast that they contain no artificial colors. Colors are plentiful in nature, and many of them are extracted and used as natural food colorants, but they have limitations and problems with application and stability.

It has been observed that synthetic food dyes are capable of damaging human health in several ways, including genetic damage and carcinogenesis. In contrast, studies have increasingly used natural pigments as an alternative to food dyes, exhibiting properties that were previously unknown, as is the case with anthocyanins, which play a vital role in physiological and environmental health. In addition, natural pigments can be used for sensitizing solar cells, tissues, and medicines. The purpose of this collection is to review the general properties of synthetic food dyes and natural pigments.