Summary

- Color, the quintessence of drinking
- Gimme a hue and I'll color the World
- Natural & synthetic
- What's your favorite color? Living color!
- The natural connection
- I need a red one
- The color of money
- The outward color



Color, the quintessence of drinking

The world we live in is made by many different things, and we use to define them by several different factors. Their taste, the way they smell, the sound they make. But our sight is probably the way we use the most in recognizing objects, faces, everything. We know things mostly by the way we see them, and color is definitely one of the most important factors we consider. We choose our clothing; we recognize our enemies and allies; we decide what to eat, by the color they are made of. Drinking makes no exception to this natural behavior. Lots of people think they are free from the conditioning that the external aspect of beverages and food operates, but scientists and operators hold a different opinion. Would you drink a glass of water that is not perfectly transparent? No, because what you first expect from water is to be transparent. Even this is just a matter of color. So, let's sail for a trip through the glamorous world of liquid colors!

Gimme a hue and I'll color the World
Apart from water, milk and few others, beverages do not exist in nature. They are a product of human work. And it is up to humans to set which features a drink may have or not. Starting from classic wine to the newest energy drink, producers rationalize the production's methods to obtain a certain kind of drink, that has a certain taste, a certain scent and a certain colour.
After mixing together all the right ingredients, it often happens that to a very good taste doesn't correspond a charming color. To avoid this lack producers put into beverages something we can call, in an all comprehensive word, color additive. We use to think about this action like it were something bad, made by sinister chemists in dark laboratories, to catch our attention while corrupting our health. This is a wrong idea we have: on the contrary, different kinds of dyes have been used to give food a different coloration for thousands of years and in any known culture. In the ancient world of the Aztecs, carmine was the homage of kings and it was considered more valuable than gold. This bright red colorant required the labor of hundreds of subjects combing the desert in search of the cochineal insect. It is believed that around 1518, Cortez discovered the Aztecs using cochineal. To the Spaniards, it was an amazing colorant and considerably stronger than other dyes used in Europe. The Spanish government turned it into a lucrative export and brought it on Europeans' tables, who were never told of its insect origin.



Natural & synthetic
To give a clear definition of the term, we can quote the words of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the institution responsible for regulating all color additives used in the United States: "Technically, a color additive is any dye, pigment or substance that can impart color when added or applied to a food, drug, cosmetic or to the human body." [Excerpted from FDA/IFIS brochure, January 1993: Food Color Facts]
In the US, FDA tests any manmade color additive. After this process, FDA releases a certification that assures the safety, quality, consistency and strength of the color additive prior to its use in foods. Anyway, the certification concerns all non-natural additives: pigments derived from natural sources such as vegetables, minerals or animals, and man-made counterparts of natural derivatives, are exempt from FDA certification. This is a prior essential distinction: there are in commerce both natural and non-natural color additives (whether a color additive is certifiable or exempt from FDA certification has no bearing on its overall safety: both types of color additives are subject to rigorous standards of safety prior to their approval for use in foods).
More precisely, the palette of colors available to manufacturers is made up of three types:
- Synthetic Colors: These do not occur in nature and are produced by chemical synthesis. In the US they require the FDA certification to be used in food coloring.
- Nature Identical Colors: These colors are also manufactured by chemical synthesis, but do not require FDA certification and are considered chemically and functionally indistinguishable from the same colorant found in nature.
- Natural Colors: These are extracted from agricultural/biological materials using conventional methods and do not require certification. The word "Natural" as it pertains to colors, has never been defined and therefore has no universally accepted definition. During preparation of the U.S. Color Additives Amendment of 1960, law makers were faced with a dilemma caused by the commercial introduction of synthetically made but chemically identical B-carotene. Should the color require certification (since it was synthesized from acetone) or was it natural, since analytically it was indistinguishable from the naturally extracted colorant? In an attempt to find a solution, law makers utilized a new term "Color additives exempt from certification" to encompass both "natural colors" and "nature-identical" colors. Due to this turn of events, the term "natural colors" does not legally exist and is not recognized by FDA. It was left up to each manufacturer to define "natural" for itself.

But why using non-natural additives? By FDA, certifiable color additives are used widely because their coloring ability is more intense than most colors derived from natural products; thus, they are often added to foods in smaller quantities. In addition, certifiable color additives are more stable, provide better color uniformity and blend together easily to provide a wide range of hues. Certifiable color additives generally do not impart undesirable flavors to foods, while color derived from foods such as beets and cranberries can produce such unintended effects.





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