What I really think about some natural food coloring brands
If I’m being honest, I’m not a huge fan of some natural food coloring brands. Naturally as a dye free cookie decorator as well as the admin of a thriving Facebook community for those interested in dye free baking and decorating, I get asked often for my opinion on certain brands. While I can’t speak on the way the products are made, likely using artificial processing aides, I can speak about their ingredients.
The biggest offending ingredient I see in popular natural food coloring is;
Polysorbate 80
From Wikipedia: Polysorbate 80 is a nonionic surfactant and emulsifier often used in pharmaceuticals, foods, and cosmetics.
Now I don’t know about you, but this is not something I want to ingest, ‘food grade’ or not. In fact just seeing the term ‘food grade’ does not make me feel better about any ingredient it’s attached to.
To be fair, not all natural food dyes contain polysorbate 80 and not even all colors within a particular brand contain polysorbate 80. But it can be found in the following brands;
Watkins (green and yellow)
365 food color (green and yellow)
Simple Truth (green and yellow)
This may not seem like a big deal but I’ll tell you why this bothers me.
If you’re trying to cut out artificial food dyes then why would you want to replace one bad ingredient for another?
There are three brands that are WIDELY available in person at stores like Target, Walmart, Kroger and even Sprouts. Those three brands are Watkins, 365 and simple truth. They likely own the biggest market share.
I understand that the polysorbate 80 is there as an emulsifier. I also understand there are better options that aren’t harmful and that more money needs to go into developing products that have a positive ingredient profile, period.
If you look at all three of these brands, the ingredients, the bottles and the results you get using them, I feel like they are all the same. Made in the same factory and just packaged differently. I will say that I also don’t love the palm oil in the Watkins brand sprinkles. The supernatural brand sprinkles contain RSPO certified palm oil which is at least sustainable, read more here.
These three brands do work, the results you get from them are not the best though as I feel you can push the limits to what can be achieved with natural colors, far further, with other brands. But seeing as more than 20,000 boxes of Watkins food coloring sold on amazon in the last month, it can sometimes feel overwhelming for someone like myself who is trying to educate others on buying the right food dye for right application.
Let’s switch gears for a second, my top three choices for food coloring, for their ingredients and efficiency are;
Trucolor
Supernatural
Color Kitchen
These would be my top three choices for natural food coloring. Not only do I like the ingredients in these products, they are also clearly labeled and transparent in their labeling practices. They also work better in my opinion.
I will be writing more about these brands in time and also about my own path to creating a dye free product in the baking/decorating industry.
What I hope to see going forward is better ingredients all round, companies investing heavily into their products to bring better offers to market. For the general population, I think we need better access to the brands that have already brought a full bodied, safe and sustainable product to the market. We need to see these products on shelves and we need more awareness about how to use them.
I would love your thoughts, hit that reply button and let me know what’s on your mind.
Camella
P. S. I’m in love with this set of cookies I created this past week. All using Trucolor powdered colors.
