Beverage R&D
A rainbow of natural options
The spectrum of natural colors increases, adding new options, plus health benefits
By Sarah Theodore
Beverage R&D
Reprinted with permission from Beverage Industry, excerpts from pages 46-52
November 2008 - AS CONSUMERS BECOME MORE DISCERNING ABOUT INGREDIENTS. THE SEARCH for a wider, more user-friendly range of natural color options continues to dominate beverage color development. Ingredient companies are finding new sources for color and new systems to make them more stable in finished formulations. . .
Stephen Lauro, general manger at colorMaker, Anaheim, Calif., says he also is seeing an increasing number of customers looking for naturally derived replacements for synthetic colors. Beverage companies are requesting colors for current products and researching options for potential changes, should the backlash against synthetics escalate.
"I sense a lot of this is what I call preparatory work," he says. "These companies are preparing for what might happen with respect to synthetic colors. I don't know that these colors would actually launch."
Pending labeling changes in the European Union, as well as a petition filed with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) have led these companies to investigate all of their options for colors, he says.
In June, CSPI filed a petition with the FDA to revoke approval for eight synthetic food dyes. In addition, it requested an interim measure to require warning labels such as, "The artificial colorings in this food cause hyperactivity and behavioral problems in some children," it said in its petition.
Most beverage company requests, Lauro says, have been options for red and yellow colors due to the preponderance of tropical, berry and citrus flavors in the industry.
In addition to alternatives to synthetics, Lauro says the beverage industry has shown heightened interest in colors that have been certified organic, all the way down to sub-ingredients and extraction methods.
"I think the accrediting certifying agencies that are out there are becoming more comfortable and familiar with natural colorants, and so I think they are getting a little more aggressive with the questions they are asking of their customer, which is also our customer, the processor," he says. "Those R&D groups are in turn asking us: 'What's in it?' 'How is it extracted?' 'How is it made water-dispersible?". . .
NEW SOURCES,
NEW LOOKS
The use of new color sources is resulting in an expanded range of natural offerings. For example, colorMaker partner D.D. Williamson, Louisville, Ky., recently rolled out new natural colors such as a purple sweet potato coloring that can be labeled "vegetable juice color" or "colored with vegetable juice."
According to Jody Renner-Nantz, food chemist with D.D. Williamson, the purple sweet potato offers a range of red to purple colors, depending on the acidity of the product.
"The pigment in the purple sweet potato is an anthocyanin and anthocyanins are very sensitive to pH or hydrogen ion concentration," she says. "At a low pH, 3.5 and below...the purple sweet potato will be red. But as you go more basic, the anthocyanins become more purple in color."
Renner-Nantz says another beverage trend that affects color use is the lean toward more translucent rather than transparent colors due to the addition of functional ingredients. Ingredients such as calcium lactate can give a product a more cloudy appearance, which has a side benefit in that it can help protect natural colors.
"From a food science standpoint, the natural colors may be more likely to degrade [in a transparent beverage] because the UV light can pass directly through the beverage, whereas a translucent-type of beverage would actually reflect some light and may have a little bit of a protective effect on the colors," she says. . .