11 - Natural pigments and colorants in foods and beverages

Abstract

Color is perhaps the single most important product-intrinsic sensory cue when it comes to setting our expectations regarding the likely taste and flavor of food and beverage. The replacement of artificial colorants by natural alternatives is becoming increasingly important in the European Union, United States, and other parts of the world. The food and beverage industries are fueled by consumer demand for natural plant-derived alternatives generally as well as by several scientific reports on the potential harmfulness of synthetic food colorants. However, when applying plant pigments to food and beverage, their limited stability needs to be considered. Due to health concerns associated with the application of synthetic colorants, modern food processing aims at stabilizing genuine pigments (e.g., by adding polyphenols with anthocyanins, or pyranoanthocyanins as natural colorants and coloring foodstuffs, respectively), which exhibit superior stability and high consumer acceptance. This chapter highlights the high potential of some polyphenolic compounds as food colorants providing red, yellow-orange, and blue hues. Besides coloring properties, the presented novel pigment sources are characterized by assumed health-promoting properties, suggesting their additional use as functional food ingredients.