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Rainbow on the palate with fruit food coloring

When a dish makes your mouth "water" just looking at it, it may be due to the colors, but these are not always the "real" ones, but the result of the use of artificial colors.

Soft drinks, sweets and frozen semi-prepared products are usually artificially colored in order to conform to what is written on the labels; even when they contain ingredients of natural origin, processing can leave foods without color. But these chemicals intended to make food more pleasing to the eyes have a dubious reputation – most of them are reportedly made from petroleum, a derivative of coal tar, and petrochemicals – and are often associated with health risks such as destabilizing the immune system, hyperactivity and ADHD (artificially colored foods are consumed the most by children, a study shows), allergic reactions and even cancer.

Fortunately, there are absolutely safe alternatives for health, only they are found in a rather small proportion in the products sold in stores, obtaining them involves much higher production costs.

Natural dyes, obtained from fruits and vegetables, can make food just as appetizing from a chromatic point of view. Thus, home-made sweets can take on amazing shades (well, maybe not as intense as commercial ones), much more real and pleasing to the eye compared to artificial ones.

Think lavender cake frosting, a deep red cake topper or the fact that you can take a themed party to another level by adding surprising colors to your dishes.

Fruits are the most convenient source of food colorings, being used in the form of puree, juice or dried/freeze-dried fruit powder, as each individual preparation allows. But because fruits do not cover the whole palette of colors, you can use certain vegetables, spices or other healthy ingredients. And because most of them are also characterized by an intense taste, in proportion to their saturation, you must take into account the fact that they can significantly affect the taste of the dishes in which they are added. That's why it's good to add a little of the food or spice used for coloring, and be sure to taste the dish during coloring.

The yellow color can be obtained by adding fresh or dried mango, yellow beet juice or turmeric/turmeric – this has a very intense taste and is more suited to savory dishes, but can also be used in sweets, in much smaller quantities.

If you want a more intense yellow or even orange, you can add a drop of red natural dye – raspberry and the strawberries fresh or dried, beetroot juice and sour cherries (juiced or freeze-dried and chopped in a blender) are the main sources of red and pink -, or you can use carrot juice and saffron.

As for the green color, the resources are more than generous: spinach, basil, wheat stalk or sprouted barley, Chlorella, Spirulina, but also Matcha powder, will complete the landscape on the plate.

For shades of blue and purple, turn to blueberries, blackberry and red cabbage juice, depending on the specifics of the dish.

You can also get deep black dishes by adding activated charcoal.