Colour consumer trend: phycocyanin allows consumers to bright and blod hues
Crossover trends
The crossover of trends between industries is impacting all areas of F&B, including the color arena.
Hybrid innovation is increasingly being used to deliver new sensory experiences as consumers become progressively adventurous. With this, “Flavor Mashups” has emerged as the first of Innova Market Insights’ Top Ten Flavor Trends for 2021.
“The crossover of interests from food, beverages, beauty and health products has accelerated the interest in organic products for example, which the color industry has taken on board through developing ranges of organic colors to meet these demands,” explains Dr. Roland Beck, head of business unit colors at Döhler.
“In the area of crossover cuisine, where food tastes from Asia and Europe intermingle, we have seen the growth of exciting and different prepared food dishes that can give a sensation of their regions of origin, requiring the application of colors in different contexts.”
The growth of sweet and savory foods being intermixed, creating new consumer experiences, has also “generated the demand for new color combinations to match these expectations,” he adds.
Color regulation: What to expect?
Damstrup at Oterra says color regulation is currently not consistent across the world.
“This means that there is a huge growth potential in many markets should legislation toward natural colors pass. We are monitoring the legislative situations closely, and as far as we know, several revisions and risk assessments related to synthetic and artificial colors are in progress in different regions, so some changes are expected,” he outlines.
“One such example can be seen in India where the Indian Regulator FSSAI recently introduced the Food Safety and Standards Tenth Amendment Regulations, which recognizes coloring foods as a separate category.”
Commenting on which applications hold the most potential for the scope of the natural color, Jacobs at DDW says this can vary significantly by region.
“Confections, for example, are great applications for natural colors. They are already used widely in these applications in Europe and the UK,” she notes.
“But there is still huge potential for natural colors in this category if North America were to shift more away from using synthetics.”
“As well as the growth of application areas for natural colors, there is also a notable geographical expansion of their successful use with regions such as the Middle East and Asia developing a greater interest in these products – often supported by local legislation encouraging this,” adds Beck from Döhler.
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