Coloring That Can't Be Beet: New Food Process Replaces Synthetic Dyes

Consumers are fickle creatures: We want to have our red-hued strawberry cake and eat it two weeks later. But the natural colorants that give fresh foods a pleasing color can degrade dramatically when exposed to common food processing techniques. This has led manufacturers to rely on synthetic dyes, to consumers’ increasing displeasure. Dyes and Pigments Chemicals

Now, a team of Cornell University food scientists has discovered a way to process natural beet juice so that it maintains its bright red color and will allow food manufacturers to use it in place of synthetic dyes in a much greater variety of foods.

Combining beet root extract with locust bean gum, sodium alginate, or gum arabic and then subjecting it to very high pressure improves the stability of red colorant during heated food processing, as well as during up to six weeks of cold storage, according to a recent paper.

“Our goal is to provide clean ways of modifying ingredients, using chemistry knowledge and technology that we develop in the lab, to help the food industry create healthier, more palatable foods,” said lead author Alireza Abbaspourrad, the Youngkeun Joh Assistant Professor of Food Chemistry and Ingredient Technology in the Department of Food Science. “We’re looking at how we can use natural ingredients, stabilize them, make them last longer, and incorporate them in our diets.”

Abbaspourrad and co-author Olga Padilla-Zakour, professor and chair of the Department of Food Science, along with postdoctoral researchers Michael Joseph Selig, Giovana Bonat Celli, and Chen Tan, filed a provisional patent for the new processing technique through Cornell’s Center for Technology Licensing.