Consumer acceptance of food colorants has shifted as attention to coloring ingredients increases. For this reason, there has been a growing demand for colorants in foods and beverages to be “natural.” The legal definitions of what is natural when it comes to color have been a source of confusion for consumers and manufacturers alike. According to the regulatory definition, in order for a color to be considered “natural,” it must be natural to the food it is coloring—i.e., beet juice to color pickled beets—yet strawberries used for the purpose of coloring strawberry milkshakes might not fall under the definition of “natural colorant,” because milkshakes are mostly milk. In formulations where the coloring agent is not natural to the main aspect of the food—even if that agent is natural—it would be considered an additive and have to be labeled as such.
The commercially available colorants typically fall into two general categories: liquids and powders. The liquids are either oil-soluble/dispersible or water-soluble/dispersible. The powders can be dried either via freeze-drying, spray-drying or tray-drying, or they can be microencapsulated versions of oil-soluble/dispersible colorants.