The "First Moment of Truth," for buyers, as defined by Procter & Gamble, is the three to seven seconds after they see a product. This can either works its magic, enticing the consumer to add it to their basket, or fail to attract the buyer altogether.
Color plays an
important role in the decision-making process of buying food, and not only
because it's visually appealing. Color is also the first thing a customer
notices when it comes to flavour. 90% of buyers make purchasing decisions
primarily on the basis of color and perceived taste. It's a make-or-break goal
for manufacturers to find the correct color to both entice consumers and
accurately portray the flavor of a food product.
Hue standardisation
in the food sector means emphasising the idea of naturalness, because the
appropriate color might boost the odds of making a sale. Even artificial dyes are
used to create a 'natural' color.
Food Coloring And
The Part They Play In Food Perception
Butter is an
excellent example of how color plays an important role in taste perception.
Butter has a different color depending on the season. Cows eat green grass,
which is high in the orange pigment beta-carotene, from early summer to early
fall. The pigment tints the fat in cow's milk, giving the butter its golden
hue. On the other hand, cows do not eat grass in the winter. Rather, they eat
grain, which does not contain much beta-carotene unless it has been genetically
modified. As a result, winter butter is lighter in color than summer butter.
It's also less tasty. Consumers came to associate the bright hue of summer
butter with better taste. As a result, producers began coloring their winter
butter with a golden hue to make it look more appealing. 'June shade' was the
name given to the color.
In Europe, it has
been practised since at least the thirteenth century. To make their butter look
summery all year, dairy producers would color it with carrot juice and annatto,
a dye obtained from achiote tree seeds. Dye manufacturers began distributing
synthetic food coloring to dairy producers for the purpose of coloring butter
and cheese late in the nineteenth century, basically launching the synthetic
food dye industry. Synthetic colors drastically reduced the cost of coloring
butter.
Even if the genuine
color of butter varies throughout the year, the synthetic dye makers jointly
decided the optimal tint to make butter look "natural" all year and
this is the butter that is in demand all over the world.
Other food makers
followed the example of butter in their perverse desire to use artificial colors
to make their products appear more "natural." Meat packers began adding
synthetic dyes in the early 1900s to make their products appear pinker and
hence fresher.
Due to the
persistently hot environment in Florida, some oranges remained green even after
ripening, causing problems for citrus growers. They were tasty, but they were a
green. Orange farmers therefore began soaking their oranges in synthetic dye in
the early 1930s to make the fruit appear more orange and hence riper, as the color
were a pliable, external attribute of the meal. By the 1940s, Florida had
widely implemented the so-called color-add process. Synthetic dyes were used to
tint twenty-one million out of thirty million cartons of fresh oranges sent out
of state during the 1946-1947 season.
Synthetic food dyes
were widely utilised in sausages, pastas, sweets, ice cream, and a variety of
other meals by the 1930s. The global food colors market today is arguably
massive. According to Reports and Data, the food colors market size was USD 4.26
billion in 2019 and is expected to reach USD 7.32 billion by 2027, registering
a CAGR of 6.9% over 2020-2027.
The Return Of
Natural Food Colors
Consumers' growing
suspicion of artificial colors and preference for naturally produced components
has made the task of adding colors to foods more difficult — particularly
because food manufacturers don't want their color appearance to shift.
Consumers expect
bright, eye-catching hues that authentically depict nature's brilliance,
according to a recent research, and the race is on to identify and process
natural colors that look good enough to eat.
Consumer advocates
and activists resisted the use of chemical additions in food throughout the
twentieth century, and they continue to do so now. The desire has prompted
major corporations to respond. Nestlé, for example, vowed in 2015 to eliminate
artificial color from their candy bars. In the same year, General Mills vowed
to phase out artificial colors from their cereals. And, thanks to a vow to
avoid using artificial colors (Yellow 5 and Yellow 6) in the product, Kraft's
famous macaroni and cheese no longer comes packaged with a Day-Glo orange
powder. To help capture these warm, vivid colors, companies have turned to old
food coloring technologies.
Many food
businesses now use, Thai starfruit, African sorghum pumpkins and carrots to get
their yellow and orange tones, however paprika and annatto extract may be the
most popular natural sources for orange tones.
In December 2015,
Kraft Heinz replaced the artificial glow of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese powder
with all-natural colorants, replacing Yellow 5 and Yellow 6 with a blend of
paprika, annatto extract, and turmeric. Manufacturers have started looking for
suppliers that can offer the vibrant tones of scarlet, creamy pinks, and deep
reds that consumers have come to expect.
Future
Of Food Colors
It's
tempting to believe that natural items are better for you than synthetic ones.
However, this isn't always the case. Natural dyes like cochineal extract aren't
the only ones that can be harmful to health. Annatto and saffron—yellow food
colorings produced from natural products—have also been linked to severe
allergy reactions.
Taste
is only one aspect of eating. It's a multi-sensory adventure. Both food
scientists and chefs agree that smelling, hearing, feeling, and seeing food is
just as vital as tasting it to completely appreciate it. If that Slurpee didn't
turn the tongue an electric blue, it wouldn't be the same. The best advice is
to keep an eye on everything that is being consumed.
