Most consumers are often attracted by colorful beverage products in the early stage of purchase. This often causes consumers' curiosity. How are colorful beverage products produced? This is due to the edible pigment. A beverage product is indispensable in four aspects: color, aroma, taste and shape. Let's briefly introduce food coloring.
Food colorant, also known as food pigment, is a kind of food additive with food pigment as its main purpose. The natural color of food can predict its nutritional value, deterioration degree and commodity value. If food has bright colors, it can not only improve the sensory characteristics of food and give people a beautiful feeling, but also arouse people's appetite. On the other hand, if the food is exposed to light, heat, oxygen or chemical substances during processing, the natural pigment will fade or the food will lose its luster, resulting in color distortion, which will give people the illusion that the food is uncoordinated, thus seriously affecting the sensory quality of the food.
How do colorful beverage products come from? Most of them rely on pigments.
Food colorant
As an important part of food additives, food pigments are widely used in beverages. At present, there are more than 60 kinds of edible pigments in common use, which can be divided into two categories according to their sources and properties: edible synthetic pigments and edible natural pigments.
Food synthetic colorants, also known as food synthetic colorants, are organic colorants made from benzene, toluene, naphthalene and other chemical products through a series of organic synthetic reactions such as sulfonation, nitration, halogenation and azotization. Synthetic colorants have the characteristics of strong coloring ability, bright color, difficult fading, good stability, easy dissolution, easy coloring and low cost, but their safety is low.
Natural edible pigments, also known as natural edible pigments, mainly refer to pigments extracted from animals, plants and microorganisms. Some varieties also have vitamin activity (β-carotene), and some also have certain biological activity functions (such as gardenia yellow and safflower yellow). Natural edible pigment has many qualities, natural color and non-toxicity, and its application range and daily allowable dosage are wider than those of synthetic pigment, but it has high cost, weak coloring ability, poor stability and easy deterioration. Of course, there are still drinks made of pure fruit juice, but they are few and far between, and even if they are available, they are expensive. You can make an appropriate survey according to the price of drinks. But even pure natural drinks, in fact, many have added pigments, so it is best not to drink colored drinks on the market.