Color is arguably the most important initial sensory cue we get from a food or beverage. It helps us almost immediately make a preliminary judgement about the desirability, quality, and palatability of what we plan to eat or drink.
The past 30 years have seen the market demand for food colorants changing in substantial ways, particularly regarding the choice between synthetic and natural colorants.
Recent trends in the food industry have favored the use of naturally derived food colorants at the expense of synthetic food coloring ingredients. This has been welcomed by consumers and activists, but it has presented challenges to food manufacturers.
The “natural colors only” movement resulted in sweeping reductions in the use of synthetic colorants and, understandably, a concurrent rise in interest in naturally derived food colorants.
The image of migrating water fowl as a natural sign of the changing of the seasons. But sometimes, there’s more to the picture. This year, a form of avian flu spread by those gracefully migrating birds led to the deaths of millions of Midwestern turkeys and laying hens—and a subsequent shortage of eggs.