Assessment of the Health implications of Synthetic and Natural Food Colourants – A Critical Review

Several types of dyes are available in the market as colouring agents to food commodities. Some commonly used synthetic food dyes include: brilliant blue, indigo carmine, citrus red, fast green, erythrosine, allura red, tartrazine and sunset yellow. The main food biocolorants are carotenoids, flavanoids, anthocyanidins, chlorophyll, betalain and crocin. There has been a rising concern over the health implications of the use of food dyes in human diets. How safe are these food colourants? This has led to a lot of studies, both by individual researchers, corporate organization-sponsored and even government-sponsored researches, to authenticate the benefits or risks associated with the use of food colourants (synthetic and natural). This review critically evaluated scientific researches from various published journal articles and reports, with a view of clarifying the health implications of using these food dyes. Various studies have shown that synthetic food colourants have considerable toxicological effects, including but not limited to carcinogenicity, hypersensitivity reactions, and behavioral effects. However, natural food colourants have been found to be relatively safe to humans. Besides the colouring property, they have been found to possess a number of pharmacological properties like strong antioxidant, antimutagenic, anti-inflammatory, antineoplastic and antiartheritic effects.