The natural food dye revolution

It’s nearly a decade since a study carried out by UK scientists at the University of Southampton linked a handful of artificial food colours with hyperactivity in children. The six colours – allura red, carmoisine, ponceau 4R, quinoline yellow WS, sunset yellow and tartrazine – require the label declaration ‘may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children’ in Europe. Consumer demand means very few food products in Europe now contain them. In the UK, the most familiar are Irn-Bru and original Lucozade, which both still contain sunset yellow and ponceau 4R.

The wholesale reformulation of hundreds of food products that used to contain one or more of these six synthetic colours has led to a rapid rise in the usage of ‘natural’ colours. The US is a long way behind. Take those brightly coloured sweets, Skittles. If you buy a bag in the UK, the ingredient listing mostly comprises natural colours, with the exception of indigo carmine and brilliant blue, neither of which was implicated in the Southampton study. Buy what is, ostensibly, the same bag of sweets in the US (albeit with grape-flavoured purple ones rather than the much nicer blackcurrant), and those natural colours are conspicuous by their absence from the product label. In their place are sunset yellow, tartrazine and allura red.