A California assembly member has introduced legislation that would prohibit the state’s public schools from serving foods that contain certain additives. In particular, Assembly Bill (AB) 2316, introduced by Jesse Gabriel (D-Encino), would prohibit schools from serving foods containing six synthetic food dyes—Red 40, Yellow 5, Yellow 6, Blue 1, Blue 2, and Green 3.

Currently, products containing these dyes are required by the EU to carry a warning label.

The introduction of AB 2316 follows the 2023 passage California Food Safety Act – which banned the use of four chemicals from foods sold in California. Like the California Food Safety Act, AB 2316 would not ban any specific foods or products; rather, Gabriel says it would encourage companies to make modifications to products sold in the state.

AB 2316 now heads to the Assembly Education Committee, where it is expected to be heard in the coming weeks.

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Gregory Ziegler, PhD, was grinding avocado pits for a study on the extraction of starch 10 years ago when something struck his curiosity. The avocado pit had reacted causing a bright orange hue.

“It was a bit fortuitous actually,” the Penn State University professor food scientist says. “For several months after, I looked high and low for studies on this. While I did find some use of it in textile dye, there was nothing related to food coloring in any studies.”

Natural food coloring accounts for 55 percent of the $2 billion food coloring market, according to Future Market Insights. While the avocado pit currently has no commercial use, Dr. Ziegler’s discovery started a new development in the natural food dye industry.

Most produce carries polyphenol oxidase which causes a brown color to emerge when exposed to oxygen. Because of substrates in an avocado’s seeds, instead its reaction is a bright orange color which can be modified into hues of red and yellow.

Since Dr. Ziegler’s idea 10 years ago, toxicologist Joshua Lambert, PhD, and analytical chemist Emmanuel Hatzakis, PhD, have joined the study. The team has expanded outside Penn State— completing a color additive petition, toxicology studies, and literary on avocado pits. The idea has formed into a business, Persea Naturals LLC, ran by CEO Robert Hicks. The company’s product, AvoColor, is the result of the team’s findings.

“We are looking into [the product’s] interactions with other food ingredients, as there may be some responsiveness to pH,” Dr. Ziegler explains. “But overall, the product is extremely stable to heat, light, and oxygen.”

The discovery couldn’t come soon enough as natural food dyes have been in high demand since 2007 when Southampton University researchers released a study suggesting synthetic food coloring causes hyperactivity disorders in children. The European Food Safety Authority evaluated the accusation and concluded the evidence “does not substantiate a link between color additives and behavioral effects” for any legal color additives.

Despite this, organizations such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest are calling for the FDA to ban synthetic dyes in food products marketed to children.

“There is a perceived health benefit in natural food coloring over synthetic: I say ‘perceived’ because there is no proof that synthetic food coloring is harmful to one’s health,” says Dr. Ziegler. “Yet there is a demand for simpler foods, using fewer chemical ingredients.”

While the use of synthetic food coloring may or may not be harmful to one’s health, Dr. Ziegler’s discovery is substantial in adhering to the growing consumer request for organic products.

Robles is an editorial intern for Wiley’s U.S. B2B editorial division.

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Since its discovery in 2002, acrylamide continues to cause concern as a carcinogenic public health risk in many manufactured foods and beverages. While fried potato products such as French fries and potato chips contain the highest levels of acrylamide and get the most media attention, baked goods—such as breads (soft and crisp) and snacks, pretzels, crackers, etc.—also contain acrylamide. In fact, when adjusted for consumption levels, baked goods actually contribute 40–50 percent to the average person’s overall daily dietary intake of acrylamide.

In addition to its carcinogenic status, acrylamide is also mutagenic and genotoxic and furthermore, it poses a disproportionate health risk to babies and children. For example, the acrylamide in foods consumed by pregnant women has been shown to reduce a baby’s birth weight and head circumference—key indicators of a child’s future health. In addition, according to Health Canada, because of their smaller bodies and the types of foods they consume, young children are typically exposed each day to twice as much acrylamide (per kilogram of body weight) as adults. Clearly, acrylamide is a quality and safety issue many food manufacturers would want to address, if there was a reasonable solution.

In the last year or two, government regulatory authorities across the globe have weighed in with reports advocating measures to mitigate the levels of acrylamide contained in many food products. Most recently, in June 2016, the U.S. FDA issued its voluntary mitigation guidelines for food manufacturers. While no agency has yet enacted mandatory allowable limits, it appears that the European Food Safety Agency is planning on setting these in 2017, with ALARA (as low as reasonably achievable) levels possibly being the goal.

For food manufacturers, there is no escaping acrylamide as a quality control and safety issue. Almost all carbohydrate-based products will contain acrylamide due to the ubiquity of the precursors—reducing sugars and asparagine—and the practice of using cooking temperatures above 120 degrees Celsius. This becomes even more problematic during post-manufacture consumer/restaurant toasting or heating; for example, when heating bread into toast, acrylamide levels are boosted many times above what is found in the original product. Given the widespread consumer movement toward clean labels and healthier food production, manufacturers taking aim at reducing acrylamide contaminant levels to ALARA levels is a goal likely to be welcomed by both governments and consumers.

However, in order to meet potential acrylamide regulatory limits or voluntary reduction guidance to ALARA levels, food manufacturers require robust and effective tools. For example, Renaissance Ingredients Inc. has developed a non-GMO (genetically modified organism) baker’s yeast that the company says can reduce acrylamide by up to 95 percent with minimal changes to the food production process and is ready for review by food manufacturers.

Renaissance recently achieved an important milestone toward commercialization when the U.S. FDA issued a no-objections letter to the yeast’s status as GRAS (generally regarded as safe), the same status as conventional baker’s yeast.

When starchy, carbohydrate-based foods like potatoes, wheat, rice, and other grains are heated above 120 degrees Celsius by frying, baking, roasting or toasting, an amino acid they contain naturally—asparagine—reacts with sugars to form acrylamide. Although baker’s yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) has a natural ability to consume asparagine, under most food processing conditions this asparagine consumption is minimal. Therefore, conventional yeast is not effective at reducing acrylamide within typical industrial food processing timelines and parameters.

Instead, by using an adaptive evolution strategy to select for the yeast’s ability to quickly degrade asparagine in all conditions, Renaissance has been able to develop a non-GMO baker’s yeast strain that the company says is capable of reducing acrylamide in a wide variety of foods much faster. According to the company, in baked bread and dark toast lab testing, the yeast reduced acrylamide levels by 80 percent while in sliced potato French fries exposure to the yeast in a water wash reduced levels by 50 percent almost immediately and 70 percent after 10 minutes.

The ability to reduce acrylamide formation will not only mitigate the health threat to both adults and children, it will also enable the food industry globally to provide high-quality products that are as low in acrylamide as reasonably achievable.

Campbell is a Vancouver-based communications consultant who writes for and about food technology companies. Reach him at scampbell@campbellpr.bc.ca.

References Furnished Upon Request

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Food dyes may be useful for more than just giving your cherry Jell-O that vivid red hue. In research described at the annual meeting of the Biophysical Society in early February, a team of food scientists from Rutgers University in New Jersey has found that common food dyes have the potential for use as edible probes of food quality.

Standard fluorescent dyes used as probes in other fields are generally unsuitable for food quality testing, as they are either too toxic for human consumption or too expensive. But the Rutgers scientists say that the edible colors that already either occur naturally in, or are added to, many foods have the potential to act as fluorescent probes.

“Almost every food you eat is fluorescent under some circumstances,” says Richard Ludescher, PhD, a professor of food science at Rutgers. “With a range of applications, we are trying to establish the idea of using molecules that are naturally in or routinely added to food as intrinsic sensors of the quality of the food.”

Sarah Waxman, an undergraduate student in Dr. Ludescher’s lab, presented preliminary findings at the Biophysical Society meeting. The group tested the fluorescent properties of five edible food colors commonly added to food or medications consumed by humans: Allura Red, Sunset Yellow, Brilliant Blue, Fast Green, and a yellow dye called Tartrazine. All five colors fluoresced in a way that was easily distinguishable from the background; they emitted almost no light in pure water, but the light intensity increased when the dyes were added to thicker solutions.

“We’ve established that these molecules respond to viscosity in simple solutions like sugar water and glycerol water,” says Dr. Ludescher. “Next, we need to find out how they respond in more complicated compositions like foods—a pudding, for example. Could we develop a probe for pudding that allows you to measure its viscosity during manufacture?”

The group’s work is supported by funding from the USDA.

Shaw writes frequently about science, medicine, and health while serving as a regular contributor on notable medical publications.

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