[Food Additives] Colour in food and beverages

1. Additive colour definition
(EU Regulation 1333/2008)

‘Colours’ are substances which add or restore colour in food, and include natural constituents of foods and natural sources which are normally not consumed as foods as such and not normally used as characteristic ingredients of food. Preparations obtained from foods and other edible natural source materials obtained by physical and/or chemical extraction resulting in selective extraction of the pigments relative to the nutritive or aromatic constituents are colours.

2. Main colouring additive pigments

There are four main classes of plant pigment: chlorophylls, carotenoids, anthocyanins and betalains, which account for the majority of naturally derived colours added to food. An understanding of the properties of each pigment is helpful when reformulating to remove one or more artificial colours, as colours derived from natural sources are typically less stable than chemically synthesised colour.

3. Main colouring foodstuffs

There is now a wide range of commercially available foodstuffs from food colour manufacturers covering a wide range of colour shades including yellow, orange and red. The stability and uses of these are very similar to the corresponding additive colour of the pigment that they contain. So, for example, a red grape concentrate will contain anthocyanin pigment and will, therefore, be sensitive to pH in a similar way to anthocyanin colour.

Often colouring foodstuffs have to be used at a higher level in food and beverages to obtain the same effect as the corresponding colour additive. Colouring foodstuffs also differ from additive colours in that they often require refrigerated storage and have a shorter shelf life. The use of certain colouring foodstuffs should be considered carefully due to the ongoing review over the legal boundary between colouring foodstuffs and food colours. However, when using them it would be prudent to check whether developments have been made in respect of the particular colouring foodstuff under consideration and if there are any legal issues associated with their use.

Table 1. Examples of commonly used additive foodstuffs and their corresponding major pigment