A dive into the world of Food Coloring
Warning: I am not a journalist and nothing below is original research or rigorously fact checked.
So I came across this comment1 on HN and its child that was posted to a subtree talking about "Open problems in Science" that I paraphrase here:
The search for a non-toxic, non-animal based chemically stable red colour.
The child links to this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmine which led me into the fascinating, and slightly disturbing, world of food colouring.
From the Wikipedia page on Carmine, the deep-red pigment derives from a series of words that lead back to a root that is also the source of the Sankrit word krimiga. What I am about to say after this should not be surprising to a Tamizhan, and possibly other Indian language speakers; the root of this word is krmi which means "worm" or "insect". That's the name for the pigment because it's extracted from crushed insects. This is a food colouring, specifically called natural red 4, in case you have forgotten.
Aside: Apparently the color Vermilion also is derived from the same insect, vermis being the Latin word for worm. The pigment though was produced from cinnabar aka Mercury Sulfide aka HgS which is toxic. This color happens to be the same as our sindoor, kumkum or kungumam though the pigment is different and not toxic. This leads to a nice rabbit hole that I will, regrettably, stay out of for now.
Carmine has other names, E120 and C.I 75470, both attempts at classification of colors.
E120 is apparently it's "E Number", which is an attempt by the European Food Safety Authority to classify food additives, one set of which is colors. The Wikipedia article has a nice listing of these colors.
After reading a bunch of articles2, one thing that seemed to stand out is that Carmine apparently falls under "Natural" food coloring, because of its origins from insects as opposed to "Red Dye 40" which is derived from petroleum and therefore is "Synthetic".
The verdict is still out on the question of safety of food coloring additives in general. Several chemicals have been found to be toxic or carcinogenic after years of use and later banned. Even worse is the case of several coloring compounds approved in one of the US and EU and banned in the other3.
Going back to the original question of natural vegetable sources for the color red, I looked into beetroots as a possible colouring source. Apparently it does work though according to multiple sources4,
synthetically produced color additives provide a more uniform color, blend easier, are cheaper, and do not add undesirable flavors
and (beetroot extract color) degrades when exposed to heat, light and changes in pH. I guess this is what the original HN comment mentioned about stability. All par for the course, really. The approach taken up industrial players is usually the one that is cheapest to scale.
I decided to take a look around in my kitchen to use my new found knowledge. Apparently, I don't have too many processed items with food colors in my larder.
1. Amul Salted Butter
It has a single sentence on the back:
CONTAINS PERMITTED NATURAL COLOR (ANNATTO)
Turns out, Annatto is E160b. I had some trouble placing it in the table first, because I was searching for yellow color additives. Turns out, it's an Orange additive filed under the Gold category. At least, it's sourced from seeds of a plant in the Mexico-Brazil area. And it's heavily used in milk/fat industry products such as butter, cheese, etc etc. Imagine the orange of cheese slices, that's basically Annatto/E160b.
Aside: I happen to have Amul Unsalted Butter and Amul Cheese in my fridge as well. If the labels are to be trusted, neither of those 2 have Annatto (or any other additive for that matter). The Unsalted butter is slightly paler in color compared to the salted one. Also, the cheese is actually pretty much the same color as the salted butter, but I guess that's all natural.
2. Britannia Bourbon
CONTAINS PERMITTED NATURAL & SYNTHETIC FOOD COLOURS (150a, 150d, 102, 110, 122, 133)
Let's see what we have here. These are INS numbers defined by something called Codex Alimentarius5 (how cool is that name!) but that's the same as our European numbers.
- 150a, 150d
- Caramel. Pretty much what you expect. Looks like the "a" variant is meant for the strong aftertaste and the "d" variant is for the rich dark brown color.
- 102
- Tartrazine for a Yellow color. FD&C Yellow 5 That's strange but Wikipedia confirms that it's used in "biscuits" and "food stuffs expected to look brown or creamy". That works.
- 110
- Sunset Yellow. Petroleum derivative. FD&C Yellow 6. Suspected, but not proven, of some scary stuff.
- 122
- Azorubine. D&C Red 10. Red to Maroon, so the color makes sense. Never approved in the US for food. Damn.
- 133
- Brillian Blue. FD&C Blue 1. Apparently one of FDAs oldest approved additive. The blue is weird, but I guess it's supposed to mix with the yellows to form darker hue.
Someday I have to see the Indian versions of these regulations. There is a whole world out there. I haven't even looked at the compounds used of other purposes like preservatives and stabilizers.
But enough chemicals for now. Let me go enjoy a biscuit without thinking too much about what it's made of…
Footnotes:
Such as https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1992-03-04-1992064250-story.html and https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/red-dye-40#overview. How accurate this information is anyone's guess.
All from the Wikipedia table of E numbers. I did not chase down the references, but this meshes with how things usually work in bureaucratic institutions. Here is the US FDA list of approved color additives if you are interested: https://www.fda.gov/industry/color-additive-inventories/summary-color-additives-use-united-states-foods-drugs-cosmetics-and-medical-devices
Such as the afformentioned article on Red Dye 40 and https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2018/04/coloring-cant-be-beet-new-food-process-replaces-synthetic-dyes
Some kind of internation food standard comprising of multiple bodies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Numbering_System