Europe to Require Natural Food Coloring

by Spence Cooper on 09/06/09 at 6:51 am

Wonder if Pantone has a say over this one

The European Union is approaching a deadline that will require warning labels on foods synthetically colored. “There’s a mad dash in Europe to get synthetic dyes out and put natural ones in, and it’s coming across the Atlantic,” said Stephen Lauro, general manager in Anaheim of ColorMaker in an AP report. ColorMaker turns beets, berries, cabbages and carrots into dyes for products such as Gerber toddler foods and Tang breakfast drink.

Last year the UK banned some synthetic food dyes, and the European Union will require foods made with them carry the warning “may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children.”

In the U.S., the FDA is under pressure by Center for Science in the Public Interest to use warning labels and eventually ban food additives that contain synthetic food dyes like Red #40 and Yellow #6. As a result, California researchers at Cal Poly are working on harvesting a purple carrot crop with more concentrated anthocyanins to use as a natural dye.

AP reports that “among the best sources of natural vegetable dye are purple carrots, organically grown for the domestic gourmet market in the San Joaquin Valley by Grimmway Farms, which is supplying juice for experiments at California State Polytechnic University-Pomona.

The carrots have been around thousands of years longer than their orange counterparts and are especially high in the antioxidant anthocyanin, the free-radical fighting plant pigment that also colors blueberries and red wine grapes”.