Wanted: Your stories on Food Coloring

Food Coloring (Creative Commons attribution: Flickr user Matthew Bland)

Mmm… delicious, delicious ethyl [4-[ p -[ethyl ( m -sulfobenzyl) amino]-α-( o -sulfophenyl) benzylidene] – 2,5 -cyclohexadien – 1 – ylidene] ( m -sulfobenzyl) ammonium hydroxide …

I’m giving a talk in Melbourne, Australia next week on food dyes and am looking for good stories and experiences with food coloring and dyes.

What fun and interesting things have you done with food coloring? Red milk on Halloween? Green eggs and ham for St Patricks Day?

Do you have any great uses of natural food colorings? Think beet juice, blueberries, etc.

How do you feel about industrial uses of food coloring? Coloring candies? Cereal? Dying the outsides of oranges to be orange? Pumping up the coloring on sausage casings? How about feed farm-raised fish pigment so that they’re peach-colored (well, salmon colored) instead of grey? (Let’s say, hypothetically, that farm-raised fish could be done sustianably in a way that was zero-impact on the environment, but the fish came out grey. Would adding coloring agents at that point to make it acceptable be ok?)

Do you know anyone who’s had ADHD or behavioral problems that they believe are related to food coloring? Details? (The FDA has stated that there’s not proof that it’s the food coloring that causes behavioral problems… changing diet changes more than just the consumption of food dyes.)

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