Hello Mamta. I am having trouble finding food colour powders.Is this one of the latest from Brussels or am I not looking in the right places please?

Hi Mike

Mum's away at the moment, so it will be a few days before she can respond.

In the meantime, I suspect one of the reasons is that there's a strong move by consumers away from food-colouring and other unecessary additives. I know that a number of my local Indian restaurants actually make a point of mentioning on their menus that they do not add food colouring and I know of few people who use it in cooking (other than to colour cake icing or the like).

Part of this is just down to a general move towards healthier, simpler and less processed foods and I suspect part of it, in the UK at least, is down to a recent mini-story about a problem with one or other food colouring additive.

And the other part of it is indeed new or more strictly enforced regulations about how much or which additives can be used. I worked on an IT project a couple of years back for a major UK food retailer and I learned that, when they and their suppliers are working on developing recipes, they'll often err on the side of caution even with additives they are currently permitted to use because legislation does change all the time and redevelopment of recipes not timetabled for redevelopment can be costly - it's not just the recipe itself but all the packaging sleeves too and the internal approval process is quite long winded. So they do tend not to use food colouring unless they feel it really adds to a product.

Hope this helps a little!

Kavita

Hello Mike

Kavita has answered on my behalf already. Tell me which particular dish you want to cook with colour and I will tell you what you can use instead. You can buy relatively well tested food colours in most supermarkets and can usually be used instead of powders.

Mamta