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How are food colours defined?

A food colour is a food additive used or intended to be used primarily for adding or restoring colour to a food. This includes:

• any natural constituent of food and any natural source not normally consumed as a food as such and not normally used as a food ingredient, e.g. colours isolated from seeds, fruits and vegetables.
• nature-identical products produced by chemical synthesis or biosynthesis.
• man-made synthetic products such as tartrazine.

Increasingly, natural food colours are being used in foods. These are usually pigments from vegetables or fruits (such as beet juice and carrot oil) or from seeds and spices, such as paprika and saffron.