BEAUTIFUL FOOD COLOR CHANGES

Food color is changing. We’re thinking about it differently. We rounded up some beautiful new ideas in playing with food color.

The old-fashioned notion of natural color is new again. We’ve been coloring food for thousands of years, using colors found in nature, like saffron and squid ink. In the past 50 years, artificial color became the norm.

Photo: Courtesy of Nibbles of Tidbets.

Now that we realize natural food is healthier, and that some natural colors offer antioxidant, anti inflammatory and anticarcinogenic benefits, we are going au naturel again, but with some new approaches. It was the hot topic last week at the 246th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society.

Photo: Alpha. Purple Sweet Potatoes

Purple sweet potatoes, black carrots or purple carrots, tomatoes and spirulina are just some of the sources for natural food colorings now.

The blues and purples mostly come from PSP anthocyanins. We featured them in Sapphire Cocktails, which got their color from the butterfly pea flower.

Photo: Courtesy of Kitchen Table Scraps. Bangkok Blush

These Bangkok Blush cocktails, from Kitchen Table Scraps, change colors before your eyes, from blue to purple, when a few drops of lime juice added.

Photo: Courtesy of Grand Traverse Pie Company. Old Mission Cherry

After synthetic reds proved dangerous, the natural red source of choice became carmine pigment from the cochineal bug. But vegetarians, vegans, people keep kosher or have carmine allergies, and those, like me, who just bug out at the idea of eating bugs, are demanding a change.  

Photo: Liz West. Local Tomatoes

Starbucks led the wave of change. They announced, just last year, that they will use lycopene as a carmine alternative in its red and pink foods and drinks. Lycopene, which puts the red in tomatoes, is now being used to color other foods and drinks.

Photo: Courtesy of Bevnet. LycoRed Tomat-O-Red line

LycoRed Ltd. has developed new formulations of vegetarian red colorants as part of its Tomat-O-Red® line. The new formulations are deeper, richer, and slightly bluer, like carmine made especially to replace the once widely used  insect-derived cochineal extract.

If you still have any bottles of that artificial food coloring leftover in your pantry, don’t throw them away. Try one of these:   

Image: Courtesy of Buzzfeed. Food Coloring

These videos of food coloring swirling through water is trippy, drippy, and cool. You’ll be mesmerized as you watch it change shapes.

Photo: Courtesy of Photojojo

All you need is whole milk, food coloring, and a little soap to create this Wavy Gravy-esque work of art. You can get the instructions here.

Photo: Courtesy of Chaikins of Bellingham.

Or you can change colors by adding oil to your food color and water soup, for a beautiful image like this one, created by artist Ann Chaikins.

Read about the beauty of Change all this week, as it relates to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact, including New Messages are Changing Worlds, How to Change Your Life & World, and Beautiful New Changed Realities.

Get busy and enter the BN Competitions, Our theme this week is Beautiful Change. Send in your images and ideas. Deadline is 9.29.13.