Researchers are calling for a review of food colors in India after finding that the majority found in popular products exceed legal limits and almost a fifth of products contain illegal colors.Sumita Dixit et al. published a study in the Journal of Food Science where they analyzed 2,409 samples of milk-based sweets, cereal based sweets and savory products that are commonly consumed in India based on surveys.
Over half of colors exceed legal limits
83.6% of samples contained permitted colors, but 58% of these were over the maximum allowable concentration limit of 100 mg/kg.
16.4% of the samples tested used non-permitted colors. The most common was Rhodamine B followed by Orange II and Metanil Yellow.
This took the total number of adulterated products; whether by exceeding permitted limits or using non-permitted colors to 64.8%.
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