Food colouring not harmful – CSIR

Food colouring is not bad, the Food Research Institute of the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has said.

The latest revelation comes on the heels of the arrest of two women in relation to a video circulating on social media in which a woman is seen dipping peeled oranges into a solution to sway the colour of the oranges.

But speaking to Moro Awudu on the Executive Breakfast Show (EBS) on Class91.3FM on Monday, 19 June, 2017, Ms Antonia Andoh Odum, the Scientific Secretary and Quality Manager at CSIR’s Food Research Institute noted that food colouring was not bad.

“Food colouring per se is not bad, it could be used in the home. Even way back our grandparents used to use it to colour our cakes and even today it’s still in use and it’s also used commercially in production and in medical circles. With food colouring, it depends on how it’s used. If it’s used wrongly, then it can be a problem, then it could be termed food fraud. But otherwise, food colours are OK to use when they are the natural types. When they are synthetic too, they must be the approved type,” she stated.

Touching on the issue of the orange seller colouring the fruit in the video, Ms Odum quizzed: “So the problem is, the lady [orange seller] using these colours, are they the approved type? Are they good for consumption?”