Dyes Are Going Native
Here is an indication of the change we are in the middle of.
Back in 2005, Nestle promised to remove all artificial coloring from its products. They vowed to switch to only natural alternatives, but had a real issue finding a replacement for their Brilliant Blue (used in Smarties).
To deal with this situation, it actually canned the blue ones altogether and just sold white Smarties instead!! Weird. Who would have guessed? Later, in February of this year, they discovered a blue-green lake algae that t’would serve.
The issue for the food manufacturers is not that the natural sources for color is not out there – there are sources available. The problem is that natural colors, as you might imagine, contain other elements that might confuse the chemistry of the overall product.
Natural colorings commonly contain wonderful vitamins, minerals, co-factors, caffeine, etc. Each of these could cross react with the other emulsifiers, stabilizers, and chemical additives of the product. This just means that the introduction of new colors can bring substantial development work when the texture, flavor, or, yes, color goes south.
According to one representative of the natural coloring industry, “Especially when talking beverages, the chemical reactivity or the lipophilic nature of natural pigments needs some specific formulation based on emulsion, encapsulation, resistance to oxydation, fading and browning.”
Blah blah blah. The bottom line is that they are willing to ditch their old formulation, which is cheaper and easier, in order to meet consumer demand. Don’t shed a tear, though. They’ll figure themselves out, and we’ll be the healthier for it.
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