The search for natural and nature-friendly food colours
With scrutiny on artificial colours intensifying and natural extracts requiring resource-heavy inputs, colours fermented from filamentous fungi or extracted from waste products could offer natural and sustainable alternatives.
Last month, the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) of the California Environmental Protection Agency announced a public review of its health assessment on the potential neurobehavioral effects of synthetic food dyes in children.
The draft document concludes that current acceptable daily intake (ADI) amounts in the US are “not adequately protective of children” and, if approved, could incentivise the California Legislature to restrict on the use of certain artificial colours in foods and dietary supplements in California.
In Europe, many manufacturers have already switched to natural colours, following a public backlash over the results of a 2007 study conducted by scientists at Southampton University which found that some artificial colours and benzoate may cause hyperactivity in children.
The UK’s Food Standards Agency, which funded the research, concluded from the findings that industry should remove the synthetic colours from all food product types voluntarily while products sold in the EU that continued to use the artificial colours in question – sunset yellow FCF (E110), quinoline yellow (E104), carmoisine (E122), allura red (E129), tartrazine (E102), ponceau 4R (E124) - had to add the warning ‘May have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children’ to the packaging.
However, a mass switch to natural extracts may not be the most sustainable choice as these are extracted from fruit and vegetables, which require water and land resources and can have significant land, carbon and water footprints.
Fermented fungi colours
Several biotechnology firms say they have found a way to manufacture natural colours sustainably.
Argentinian start-up Michroma, for instance, takes filamentous fungi and CRISPR engineers them to create proprietary industrial strains that, when added to a growth medium composed of water and food in controlled bioreactors, naturally secrete colour.
Michroma takes this novel compound produced by the fungi and concentrates or dries, creating an additive that has a vibrant colour and is more pH- and thermostable than other natural dyes, it says.
Thanks to the tightly controlled, closed production system (the fungi grow in bioreactors), it can maximise yields and aims for its red colour to be on a price parity with other natural red food colours or colouring foods. The ultimate objective, however, is to bring the price down to compete with petroleum-based artificial dyes.
Another player in the field, Denmarkt’s Chromologics, has also developed a fungal biotech platform to make a natural red that has a lower cost-in-use than carmine or betanin.
The company, spun out from the Technical University of Denmark, says its “wild type cell factory” is more sustainable because the colours are not extracted from high value raw materials like fruit and vegetables. Price is also stable because it is not dependent on sourcing raw materials which can change depending on the harvest season.