What is Red Food Colouring?
Artificial food colours have become an emotive subject. India has always cooked with natural colours. Natural red is achieved using tomato, paprika or chilli. But these ingredients onl arrived in India after 1500AD. In Kashmir, a strange herb called marval (cock’s comb) is used and cooking oil is coloured deep red using the bark-like alkanet root (ratin jot). Yellow derives from saffron and turmeric, green is achieved using spinach and green vegetables. None of these are heat-stable, so they change colour, becoming browner, when cooked, for example with authenic tandooris and tikkas as cooked in India. The very bright red and orange food that we are accustomed to at the tandoori house, and coloured grains of rice are a British curry house restaurateur invention. It is achieved by using tartrazine food dyes, whose colours include red, yellow, orange, green, etc. Made from coal tar, they are proved to have ‘side-effects’ on certain people (particularly on about 1% of the nation’s childre
