Ever since I decided to pursue my passion for baking and cooking, the pharmacist inside me could not stop making comparisons of different ingredients used in food, much like those used in a pharmaceutical dosage forms.
One such ingredient that particularly attracted me was the use of food colours. In pharmaceutical products, different dyes or food colours are used to enhance the aesthetics of medicines like tablets or sometimes to mark their identification. The use of food colours as an additive has more or less the same objective, to be a feast to the eyes and the palate.
Going further into its definition, food colours are a type of dye, pigment or a chemical substance that impart colour to any eatable or a drink. They could be in form of a liquid, powder, gel or a paste. Anyone who is fond of cooking is well aware of food colouring. But another fact that might surprise us is that even the most commonly consumed foods in Bangladesh like fish and rice are also dyed.
The question arises as to why food colours are used. It is a well-known fact that colour plays a crucial role in the taste and perception of food. Alongside flavor and texture, colour is considered by many to be a major quality factor of food. For example, glaced cherries would be beige in colour, if not dyed red. Another interesting fact is that colour of food would also tell us if it is spoilt or fresh. According to food researchers, colour was the easiest clue to identify between good and bad food. Any food gone blue, purple or black would obviously be inedible.
This is the very reason the food industry, in order to meet customer satisfaction, tries to preserve food through the seasons. Through different processing steps, storage conditions, moisture effects and heat, food is dyed. Other reasons are to cover up the lighter and darker shades of food like fruits and vegetables, enhance the naturally occurring colour, provide identification to a certain foods, protect flavours and vitamins from destruction and lastly, for decorating food, such as cake fondants.
The earliest use of food colours has been recorded, as archaeologists claim that food colours have likely emerged around 1500 BC. Saffron is mentioned as a colorant in Homer’s Iliad, and Pliny the Elder remarks that wine was artificially colored in 400 BC. Saffron has long been used to give a yellow tint to rice, and squid ink to give pasta a black appearance. Other popular natural colorants of old ages consists of paprika, turmeric, beet extract, and petals of various flowers.
Nowadays, the use of artificial food coloring makes it more appealing and attractive. While the safety of these dyes is always called into question, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) maintains that artificial food coloring is currently limited to meet strict safety requirements. Relating to the authorised food colours in the US, FDA has seven food colours to be used in food which are known by their Food, Drugs and Cosmetics numbers.
In Bangladesh, the growing concern is the use of dyes or colours which are not at all meant to be used in food. For example, use of paper, textile and leather dyes in a variety of sweets. Similarly, other cultural foods like beguni, peaju are also adulterated by textile dyes. However, I was shocked to learn that perhaps the most reprehensible use of toxic colorings, like red lead and vermillion, in the manufacture of candies and jellies which our children love to eat.
Now these types of dyes are extremely dangerous for health as they can cause vomiting, diarrhoea, allergies, asthma, sleeping disorders, heart diseases, several kinds of neurological diseases and even cancer, as they are not meant for human consumption.
This is the very reason that the use of authorised food colour is subject to strict legislations all over the world, including ours. In the United States, there is the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. Similarly in Bangladesh, there are also has many laws in order to regulate the standards of food manufacture and sale, one of them being the “Bangladesh Pure Food Ordinance, 1959 (Bangladesh Ordinance No. LXVIII of 1959).”
Lastly, I must add that there is always a person at the end of the supply chain, the consumer. It is our responsibility as well, to read food labels carefully and check eatables manufactured by a even the most reputed of companies, especially when it come to purchasing jellies and toffees for our children.
