Natural blue food colorants: Consumer acceptance, current alternatives, trends, challenges, and future strategies

Background: The food industry seeks to expand the color palette with natural colorants. Nevertheless, in nature, the blue color is rare compared to other colors. Despite synthetic colorants' effects on human health, synthetic blue colorants are largely used by the food industry. In this way, consumers usually associate the blue color with artificial ingredients. However, whether blue colorants obtained from natural sources were used in food production, would consumers better accept these products? Scope and approach: The current demand for manufacturing food products with natural ingredients has increased the market interest for natural blue colorants. Therefore, this review summarizes the current scenario of synthetic blue colorants' use and the possible sources of natural colorants that the industry can use to replace them. Also, the challenges, alternatives, and future strategies are discussed. Key findings and conclusions: Although a considerable effort has been dedicated to searching for new blue colorants, they present some limitations: physical and chemical instability, the unfamiliarity of the blue color compound, and high-production cost. Among the blue colorant options, the compound formed by the reaction between genipin and primary amines seems to have the highest potential for industrial application. However, its composition, toxicity, physical and chemical stability in adverse processing and storage conditions are still unknown.

Automated summary

The food industry aims to expand the color palette with natural colorants, but blue color is rare in nature compared to other colors. Synthetic blue colorants are widely used despite consumer association with artificial ingredients. Efforts to find new blue colorants have made progress, but limitations still exist.