You can be sure to see parents carefully reading labels for buzzwords like organic, natural, healthy, and so on as you stroll down the aisles at your local grocery shop. Perhaps you are one of those parents.
If you are making food decisions for your family, it is important to consider healthy, tasty options that your kids will enjoy. Children are notorious for being picky eaters. However, they won’t eat anything unless it looks good. To make your shopping experience more enjoyable, add visual appeal to the equation — such as coloring.
Yogurt should have a pastel shade. Sweet shades are required for fruit juices. Each cereal flake must look as inviting and appealing as the box says. This is the big question: How does this happen naturally?
“Natural colors are derived from all the active ingredients responsible for colors found in nature, like plants, fruits and vegetables,”Tammi Higgins is the Natural Colors Commercial Development Manager at FMC. “They’re used in food and beverages as an alternative to artificial colors made from coal tar and petroleum. Nature is able to provide bright and vivid colors in every shade of the rainbow.”
Consider red beets and grapes as likely items in your refrigerator.
Anthocyanins are derived from grapes, other fruits, and vegetables and impart vivid pink to red-purple hues in a wide variety of foods, such as fruit chews or fruit-based beverages. Beetroot also helps to intensify the color in tomato paste and redistribute the red color in red velvet cakes.
Annatto is another beautiful natural color. It’s the seed of the tropical shrub Bixa Orellana, also known as the lipstick tree. This plant is native to Central and South America. Annatto seeds are a favorite of many families. They can be used in traditional cooking as well as being used to produce bright yellow or orange colors.
Foods that have natural coloring are easier to identify and more easily recognize because they do not contain any chemical ingredients. Natural colors come from sustainable sources and are vegan, Halal, Kosher and Kosher. They can be certified organic.
Look out for foods with natural colors as you browse the supermarket aisles looking for healthy choices for your family. You should remember that food additives are any substance that is added to foods to improve its color or preserve it. If the additive is from Mother
Nature is a wise choice.
