Colouring our foods in the last and next millennium

Colour in one form or another, has been added to our foods for centuries. It is known that the Egyptians coloured candy, and wine was coloured as long ago as 400 BC. The developing food industry had available a vast array of synthetic colours in the late 1800s. This led to colours being added for decorative purposes and unfortunately to disguise low quality foods. There was no control over this use of colour and so inevitably legislation came into force. In particular this was as a result of health concerns over some of the toxic compounds used. An established list of permitted synthetic colours eventually came into force in most countries early in this century. In the last twenty years however, consumers have become increasingly aware of the ingredients in their foods and as such they require foods to be as 'natural' as possible. This combined with technological developments has fuelled the increase in the usage of naturally derived colours. Today the food industry has an extensive colour palette available, allowing selection of the most suitable colour for their application requirements. Legislation is also in place to protect the consumer. Colour suppliers are however constantly striving to improve the technical and physical properties of their colour portfolio, to make the use of colour easier, to improve the stability and to meet customer demands on the functional additives used within colour formulations. This paper will review all colours in terms of recent developments and regulations as well as addressing the question of the future of colours in the next millennium.