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Apr. 24 2010 - 9:25 pm | 818 views | 1 recommendation | 165 comments

The Edible Palette: Inside a Food Coloring Factory

By NADIA ARUMUGAM

If you’ve ever considered how the red M&M becomes, well, red, and more interestingly, where exactly that “red” comes from, you’ll want to read this post. Wanting to get to the bottom of the red candy conundrum myself, I paid a visit to a food coloring plant in New Jersey. The answer, as  you’ll see, is really quite fascinating….    

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“Red is our most popular color. Yellow and browns also do well but everyone loves a good red,” says Sal Harfouch in an airy room that resembles a three-dimensional artist’s palette. And what could be more fitting? Harfouch is the Senior Chemist at Spectra Colors Corps, a company in Kearny, New Jersey which supplies manufacturers with colorants for ink, cosmetics, candles and food. A wide, glossy tomato-red stripe marks a luscious border between the walls and the ceiling. One wall is seaweed green. Two large color charts featuring every hue imaginable and their universal codes hang in black metal frames and above sit a clock with a cherry red face, sunny yellow hands and rainbow numbers. Another wall is a subtle iteration of caramel macchiato and the one adjacent to it is mustard with a tinge of terracotta as if some cayenne was thrown into the mix. A display cabinet boasts a collection of green Cheetos, wax crayons, a jar of lurid pink Maraschino cherries and a plastic bottle with a Scooby-Doo cartoon label filled with a purple fluid. In stark contrast to this dizzy mélange of colors, a fourth glass wall looks out onto two harried receptionists squirreling away on their PC’s; a reminder that real work is done here.

“I’m the general all-round entertainment,” Harfouch jokes. “Sal’s such a storyteller,” cuts in Peter Caputo, the company Product Manager who’s been assigned to chaperone me, with a slightly embarrassed laugh. Harfouch is a 47-years-old Lebanese immigrant. He moved to the U.S. in 1983 to study Chemical Engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, upped his qualifications with a Masters in Biochemical Engineering at Rutgers then joined Spectra 15 years ago as a lab technician. Harfouch’s appearance is drab in comparison to his surroundings; a long blue lab coat over jeans, a hint of a white and aquamarine striped collar and brown loafers. But his bubbly demeanor, big brown eyes suspended in a look of surprise and a pie-shaped face punctuated with a cheeky smile brighten the ensemble. Despite his claim of court jester, Harfouch plays the most important role in the day-to-day running of the company. No color leaves without his approval. Though the food colors are not made onsite – they arrive in sealed vats from India – he supervises the value-added services Spectra provides; blending the specific tone a client has requested and liquefying the powders to easy-to-use pastes.

Red wasn’t always popular. In the early 1950’s inconclusive results when the color Red 2 was tested by the Federal Department of Agriculture (FDA) did not bode well. A small number of female rats fed with the dye developed more breast tumors than others in the group. Alarm bells rang and additional tests were ordered with 800 rats and 800 mice. In 1969 the FDA issued a memorandum stating that the dye was safe. Around this time the Russians published results from their own studies on the dye showing that it caused rats to develop intestinal tumors and that it was toxic to the embryos. These studies were almost universally discredited. But the public caught whiff of them and the FDA rushed to carry out more studies to prove it was right. The agency conclusively ruled out embryonic toxicity. As for the cancerous tumors, statistical analysis from these new tests revealed an increased number of malignant tumors in female rats. With public pressure mounting, the FDA struck off Red 2 from its list of permitted food colorings in 1976. The reaction to this debacle was so strong that manufacturers not only scrambled to remove any last traces of Red 2 from products but also stopped using other permitted red colorings. Mars axed red M&M’s even though they didn’t contain Red 2 and didn’t re-introduce them until 1987.          

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When we feast on Lucky Charms, devour candy corn niblets or guzzle down Gatorade we aren’t under any illusion that these eye-popping concoctions are colored by Mother Nature. These are treats that we categorize as being firmly in the realm of “fun foods”. Fun foods are inherently not good for us; at least that’s what we grew up to believe. Fruits – not fun, wholewheat cereals – not fun, gummi bears – fun, bubblegum flavored ice cream – so much fun. So the further away from natural coloring our party foods are, the more likely we are to accept them as indulgent treats and the more we crave them as such.

But aesthetic appeal in our diet isn’t limited to fun foods. Green pickles, earthy wholegrain cereals, golden bagels, burnished Florida oranges, rich yellow cheeses, ruby red grapefruit juice and rainbow hued fruit yogurts, are amongst our most typical staples. Scrutinize their labels and you’ll see another common characteristic; they probably include an ingredient or two that serves no purpose other than to impart color.

“We start to taste when we see something,” says Dr. Gabriella Petrick, Assistant Professor of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University. If a smoothie is a mellow shade of yellowish-orange and we see apricots on the label, our expectations have been fulfilled. We anticipate the gustatory experience so clearly that our brains, tastebuds and olfactory organs work together to taste “apricot” before we actually taste it. It’s these collective cultural references then, informed by ingrained memories of what foods should taste, smell and look like that manufacturers tap into. But on occasion they ignore these vital clues to their detriment. Dr Petrick recalls when Pepsi launched Crystal Pepsi in 1993. The Clear Alternative to Cola, the billboards boasted. Paradoxically, though unadulterated cola is clear, for as long as it’s been marketed, it’s been colored brown. As far as the consumer was concerned, if it wasn’t brown it wasn’t cola. The public was so confused by the soda that sales never picked up.

Dr Petrick’s cubby hole office, decorated with boxed retro children’s cooking sets (cupcakes and pies), diminutive bottles of Heinz tomato ketchup and rounds of gummi candy masquerading as mini pizzas, invests her with an air of an ingénue. So does her youthful sense of geek chic – fitted denim jacket, thick, rectangular frames sitting atop a button nose and tinted blonde layers. But her list of credentials and years studying the tight-lipped world of food processing suggest otherwise.  “There’s a false misconception that manufacturers set out to deceive consumers, they are just sending sensory signals to let the consumer know what a food tastes like,” Dr Petrick explains. The 1938 Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act bans the adulteration of food by any agent intended to dupe the consumer into thinking the product is superior in quality or more nutritious than it actually is. Color, then, is another marketing tool, like an enticing image or well-written blurb on the back of a cereal box.

To this end Florida orange growers have historically sprayed their green oranges with Citrus Red 2.  The subtropical climate of the Sunshine State entails nighttime temperatures in the orange groves stay relatively high. This causes chlorophyll (a green pigment) to return to the orange skins imbuing them with a greenish or yellowish finish as they ripen. Truly natural foods rarely conform the aesthetic ideals that we have for them, precisely because these ideals have been molded by unrealistic expectations of what is natural. TV commercials and supermarket advertising sell us on the idea that strawberries are perfectly heart shaped, that bell peppers are blood red and that oranges, are well, orange. Visit a farm or an orchard and you’ll soon learn that reality does not live up to our Platonic ideals. For consumers, a ripe orange is an orange orange; peddle green oranges, and chances are they will remain unsold. In a peculiar twist of irony then, foods are artificially colored so that they conform to our warped ideals of nature. As an economic necessity then, Florida oranges are “de-greened”.

Indeed, economics and color frequently go hand in hand. “Margarine is naturally white,” Dr Petrick reminds me. But it has appeared yellow since its invention to “suggest” to the consumer that it’s a worthy substitute for butter. As a signifier of how important color is to margarine sales, in the early 1900’s the dairy industry, threatened by margarine’s popularity, encouraged State legislatures to ban manufacturers from coloring the spread to quell the public’s appetite for it. The tactic worked, but margarine producers found a way around this obstacle, Dr Petrick recalls. Her aunt would tell her about how she kneaded yellow dye that was sold in small capsules alongside packs of opaque, colorless margarine into the spread before serving it. Once policy makers realized how absurd this was, the ban on yellow margarine was repealed in 1950.

***

If you ever have a colonoscopy after gorging on blue raspberry flavored popsicles or candies, don’t be surprised if your doctor reports that your colon is a starling shade of blue. Just as these treats dye your tongue, they will dye your insides. But don’t worry. The color will eventually wear off the walls of your stomach, intestines and colon leaving no permanent damage. Currently there are seven FDA approved synthetic colors that can be used in food; two reds, two yellows, two blues and a green. Working from this basic palette, chemists like Harfouch create the plethora of hues that color our diets. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent testing and re-testing these colors to ensure that there is “reasonable certainty” that they are harmless (to quote from an FDA consumer publication). Beyond this, every batch of synthetic food color produced has to be FDA certified through further testing before being used. In 2002 the FDA certified 16.5 million pounds of color additives. As a final measure of safety, in 1960 the Delaney anti-cancer clause was introduced which prohibits the use of any color found to cause cancer in animals or humans. This is irrespective of whether the amount used is proven to be harmless. And, this is irrespective of the fact that beer, sausages, eggs and wine, amongst an almost never-ending list of foods known to contain carcinogens, are abundantly available and routinely consumed.  

“It’s like making a meatball from a cow, ” says Harfouch as we sit around an outsized, varnished wooden table scattered with red and yellow bowls of pinwheel candy and Paper Mate pens emblazoned with You’ll Know Us By Our Colors. “No, it’s like making a car from steel,” he concedes after a moment’s consideration. Harfouch is explaining how food colors are made from petroleum. Originally they were derived from coal-tar, the black viscous waste product left over from distilling coal for gas. Nowadays anilene, a petroleum product – toxic in its raw state- is a more cost effective source. Take Spectra’s most popular food color, 6-hydroxy-5-[(2-methoxy-5-methyl-4-sulfophenyl)azo]-2-naphthalenesulfonic acid, commonly known as FD&C Red 40, Harfouch explains that it’s just a big word for a tiny molecule that appears orangey red to the naked eye. Play with the chemical structure contributing a rosy tint to Pilsbury Pie Crusts, Minute Maid’s Orange Soda and Betty Crocker’s Hamburger Helper and you’ll come upon FD&C Yellow 5, a form of the chemical compound tartrazine. After much talk of molecules, bonds and synthesis, Harfouch insists that the final product is so refined that even the most microscopic amount of petroleum has been filtered out.

Harfouch says that his favorite color is pink, although for the most part he prefers earthy tones to bright shades. He also says that he couldn’t care less if manufacturers put cyanide in his food. That is as long as they are American manufacturers. “I tell my wife, don’t buy anything that isn’t made in the U.S.,” such is his faith in the governance of the FDA.

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In a somber laboratory humming with the soft whir of computers and diagnostic equipment, Harfouch performs his artistry. He blends the FDA certified colors in a small paint shaker until he matches the client’s swatch. He combines red and blue powders in various amounts for nuances of purple, and red, yellow and blue for browns. The powder dyes are very messy to work with; exploding in a mist of dust that settles on everything around when disturbed. Colors can change shade, or metamerize, under different light sources, so when Harfouch hits on a perfect match he has to be sure it looks the same under sunlight as it does under artificial, supermarket light. When he’s sure, a 100 gram sample is sent to the production arm; a small windowless room occupied with two machines and lit by a strange luminous glow. Trained workmen in smocks, sterile shoes and with their hair tucked inside nets use Harfouch’s recipe to weigh individual powders on a clunky industrial scale. The dyes are transferred to a mechanized drum which rotates leisurely, combining the colors until they match Harfouch’s 100 grams. Then they are decanted, packed into sterile buckets and shipped. 

For customers that don’t favor dust clouds, Harfouch concocts a simple stir-in liquid colorant from the powder dyes.  These only work however, if a customer manufactures a moist, non-oil based product, (sodas, smoothies, yogurts etc.), as the dyes are water-soluble. When it comes to fatty cakes and pastries, chewing gum, chocolates or oils, Harfouch has another trick up his sleeve. He creates “lakes” or non-soluble colorants which are dispersed in a variety of bases depending on their final use. For chocolate, the lakes are dispersed in vegetable oil. To coat the outside of a gum ball or a candy like an M&M with a vibrant, hard shell, lakes are dispersed in a sugary sucrose concoction.  

“I’d rather eat synthetic colors than natural colors,” says Harfouch defiantly passing by a glass chamber sprayed with inks and splodges of indiscernible color. “They’re safer,” he adds stopping by a wall where a myriad of glass beakers and conical flasks and test tubes hang on wooden hooks. Unlike synthetic colors, every batch of natural coloring, such as pink derived from beets, yellow from turmeric, red from cabbage juice and purple from sweet potatoes, isn’t subject to certification. This is because they are produced from the same fruits, vegetables and spices that we ordinarily consume; but it doesn’t mean they aren’t regulated. Natural colors were subjected to careful testing before manufacturers were able to use them. The food industry though is still wary of natural colors, but it’s not a question of safety. Natural colors are substantially more expensive but considerably less effective. They have a shorter shelf life, are less vibrant than synthetic dyes and once applied to foods, they fade quickly. Though simply the natural characteristics of an organic composition, these flaws can be very costly for a manufacturer. Caputo mentions a natural green dye – a chlorophyll paste – he was testing. When he came back to it after three weeks, he found that it had developed an unsightly mold. “What’s wrong with mold,” pipes up Harfouch, a twinkle in his eye betraying his otherwise straight face, “it’s very nutritious and has plenty of antibodies.”

Upon a closer inspection of FD&C Red 3, the popular pinky red hue enlivening the Maraschino cherries in the display cabinet in Spectra’s conference room, Harfouch’s recommendation may well be a palatable option.  In 1990, the FDA banned certain uses of this dye. A test had shown that male rats fed huge amounts of the color developed an unusually high number of thyroid tumors. The rats also turned pink, but it was the cancer that concerned the scientists. The Delaney Clause was applied, but it was only external uses of FD&C Red 3 that were prohibited by this new mandate. The FDA has promised to “take steps” to permanently ban the dye from all uses, but 19 years later, it’s been removed from lipsticks and eye shadows, but it still lies undisturbed in fruit cocktail tins around the country. With no other coloring option for cherries, fruit cocktail makers say that their sales would drop by 40% without lurid, pink cherries, with a resulting 250 million dollar negative impact on the economy. Mold, anyone?

 
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    About Me

    Confused, perhaps. Well fed, definitely. A Malaysian of Tamil ethnicity, raised in London and now living in New York, I couldn’t have asked for a better culinary heritage. My Sunday roast is massaged with garlic, ginger and red chilies. My chicken soup is infused with heady coriander and the warmth of toasted cumin. My meatballs are transformed by a spattering of my mother’s curry powder and a glug of soy sauce.

    I live to eat and I eat to live. Quite literally. I write about food, who produces it, who cooks it and who eats it. Most recently I was the food editor for the London based culinary magazine, Fresh, and my first cookbook, Chop, Sizzle & Stir - the final word on stir frying - has recently hit the shelves. I have also written for numerous culinary and lifestyles magazines in the UK and in the Southeast Asia. When I'm not cooking, thinking about my next meal or eyeing up someone else's, I'm usually asleep!

    I’m fascinated by our culinary customs, traditions and innovations. The recipes we learn from our mothers, the treats we indulge in when no one’s looking and the meals we dish up for friends reveal who we are and who we want to be. So join me in this most delicious quest as I concoct, imbibe and ingest to understand that little bit more about my fellow diners!

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