The Importance Of Artificial Food Pigments

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Food Pigments: Classification, Challenges, Concerns and Health benefits

Introduction:
Food pigment or food colorant is a color additive that added to food or drink to impart color. In addition, any chemical that reacts with another constituent produce a color is also considered in the class of food pigment.
Natural food pigments are prevalent in plants, animals and microorganisms. These natural pigments enhance the visual appeal of raw food to where colors are associated with the quality of food.
Artificial food pigments are used in food due to two main reasons. The main reason is to compensate for the loss of the natural colors due to the physical parameters of light, temperature, air and storage conditions. The second reason is to make the food more attractive by enhancing the existence natural colors or by the giving a color to …show more content…

Health benefits associated with artificial food pigments
Recently controversial studies reported a possible useful mechanisms for some artificial food pigments. In this regard, anti-inflammatory and anti-depressant effects were reported fore Brilliant Blue (Ma, Ren, Zhang, & Hashimoto, 2014).
Classification of the artificial food pigments:
Artificial food pigments could be classified according to their color to four main groups, blue, red - orange, yellow and green – white group. Table 1 shows the most used food pigments in each group and their relative ADI values and applications. The lowest ADI values were reported to the red to orange group of pigments with ADI values between 0.1 and 0.8 mg/kg b.w. making this group the most dangerous pigments, followed by the green-white group (with ADI values between 0.1 and 0.8 mg/kg b.w), then the yellow group and finally the blue group is the less dangerous

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