Add Visual Attraction To Your Cuisines With Food Colorants

Just imagine your food as black and white! Or some dull colors like muddy Grey! Will you be tempted enough to eat them? Most of the people would not. Seeing is very significant for us human beings and that is a known fact since ages. Early civilizations introduced color into their food and that too very naturally. Ancient Egyptians made their food yellow with saffron. Wines were also colored in 400 B.C.E. using saffron only. Romans colored their white bread by mixing alum to the flour.

Today our food processing industry uses many types of industrial colorants, the main being- Food Dyes and Lake Food Colors. Not only food stuff ,but pharmaceutical products, cosmetics, inks, plastic food containers etc. are also colored with these artificial colors. So when you are having those colorful vitamin pills or using that lipstick, you are consuming these artificial food colors. It's not that only synthetic food colors are used in processed foods and other materials, there are many organic lake colors (organic lake pigments) too that are widely used for coloring food, thanks to the awareness about organic living! These organic lake pigments are obtained from natural sources. Some of the examples of such organic lake food colors include caramel, turmeric, beet and berry juice, paprika, saffron etc.

There is a wide range of synthetic colors too that are safe and commonly used in culinary preparations to make it more attractive and tempting for the palates. Synthetic foods are offered in highly purified form and are approved under the pure food and drug act, making it completely safe for the users. Synthetic Food Colors are commonly used in syrups, cakes, biscuits, candies, ice creams and fruit juices among others. Archaeological evidences show the use of synthetic food color to over 3000 years ago and their popularity has only increased with the passing times.

Synthetic food make the preparations more delectable and appetizing as taste is largely influenced by the smell and appearance of food stuffs. There are many synthetic colors including Allura Red Amaranth, Black, Green, Sunset Yellow, red etc and are used to give richness to even natural fruit drinks like orange juice.

Blended colors are made by mixing two or more colors for the desired color result. These water soluble coloring agents are combined in the desired fashion to get the right color. Blended are typically made to cater to the unique needs of the customers and are manufactured in compliance with the international quality standards. Blended are used in ice creams, fruit drinks, pastries and even pharmaceutical products. Some of the examples of industrial colors include pink, chocolate brown, lemon yellow, purple and pea green - to list just a few.

Different Types Of Pigments For Paint And Coating

In today’s world, there’s a big number of pigments accessible. Following the introduction of synthetic pigments, various categories of pigments has evolved that are suitable to particular kinds of industries. Let’s discuss about the kind of pigments briefly.

Inorganic pigments:

This type of pigments are developed via chemical manufacturing instead of grinding & washing minerals or clay taken directly from the earth. The preparation procedure is also very simple and comprise the steps of cleaning, drying, pulverizing and blending into a formulation. Few Examples of inorganic pigments: lead oxide, cobalt blue, chromium oxide, cadmium yellow, and nickel titanate. Almost all of the inorganic mineral pigments used today are manufactured, or synthetic. A synthetic version of a pigment may be chemically identical to the natural form, but it is produced artificially rather than naturally. It may also be an entirely new pigment created from minerals.

Organic pigments:

Organic Pigments are chemically synthesized, as they are not found in nature. They contain carbon and comes with relatively low levels of toxicity, not providing any major environmental concern. Raw materials can include coal tar and petroleum distillates that are transformed into insoluble precipitates. They are used as mass colorants and are popular in plastics, synthetic fibers and as surface coatings-paints and inks. In recent years the organic pigments are used for hi-tech applications that includes photo-reprographics, opto-electronic displays and optical data storage.

Key features & characteristics of Organic Pigments

• Good tinctorial strength

• Cost effectiveness

• Consistency and unique shades

• Completely non-toxic

• Organic pigments shows good color strength

• Very good stability to solvents, light, heat, and weathering

• Very bright, pure, rich colors

Metallic pigments:

Metallic Pigments give bright effects, due to this they are widely used and are a very popular category of pigments. Metallic pigments, can be of two types aluminum and zinc.

Because many of these new pigments for paints were less costly, and because there have been dramatic improvements on the range of available colors, many of them were made available before rigorous testing for bleeding was performed. For those painters for whom bleeding of one color into another, no matter how slight, is a problem, a simple, but not conclusive, bleed test can be performed.

The new, synthetic pigments for coatings are still derived from such natural substances as petroleum, but they have been chemically modified to create a new substance that is unnatural to the environment and, to many, has an unnatural appearance. Many of these colors, because of their industrial applications, are now part of our cities’ visual environment, our synthetic environment.