Spectrophotometric analysis of food colourants as synthetic dyes in different types of food products

Abstract

The present objective is to detect three food colourants (FCs) viz. Sunset Yellow, Tartrazine and Allura Red in the commonly consumed beverages and foods with the help of spectrophotometric analysis. Moreover, water and ethanol reference indicated that yellow coloured soft drink containing Tartrazine and orange coloured energy drink containing Sunset Yellow have similar absorbance (290 and 479 nm). Pinkish red coloured energy drink and fruit juice containing Allura Red (510 and 505 nm) have similar absorbance (300 nm) for both solvent, same absorbance for deep yellow coloured food as powder form containing Tartrazine (300 nm), grey coloured and light brown dry food containing Allura red (310 and 300 nm), yellow and light-yellow coloured soft drinks containing Tartrazine has similar absorbance (440 and 470 nm) for both solvents. The mixture of synthetic dye, deep red coloured containing Tartrazine, Sunset Yellow and Allura red shows absorbance at 480 nm. In conclusion, the concentration of these three FCs is easily detected through time-of-flight mass spectrometric analysis, which could be suitable measurement to detect the presence of dyes in the food products prior to quantitative assessment for food industry.