The colour of food

Why are food colorants used?

The simple answer is that we have become used to our food looking a certain way and this can only be achieved by adding food colorants.

Freshness and flavour are associated with bright colours, especially golden orange, green and red. Colour enhancers are added to red meat to give it the pinky redness we expect and also to inhibit bacteria. Tartrazine, a yellow dye, is added to fish batter to give it the yellow appearance we expect.

Colour is also linked to quality. Experiments have shown that changing the colour of an inferior orange juice to match that of a higher quality juice increases its rating in taste preference tests.