With the continuous improvement of living standards and the accelerated pace of life, the nutrition and convenience of diet have prompted the rapid growth of the consumer market of bakery products. In order to meet the needs of the basic nutrition and taste of products, consumers also hope that the products have a beautiful "face value", which also forces companies to continuously develop innovative new products. Taking bakery products as an example, in addition to creative shapes, adding colors to products is also the direction of development.

In order to highlight the theme of birthdays or festivals, in addition to using fruits to set off the color of birthday cakes, different colors of fruit and vegetable powders or pigments are also added to the cream to make the cakes colorful. The pigments used in decorated cakes belong to the color decoration of cakes in the classification of GB2760 "National Food Safety Standard - Standard for the Use of Food Additives", and there are many types of pigments that can be used. The amount of coloring added in the decorated cake is very small, and it is only used in the decoration part, and cannot be used in the cake embryo. At the same time, the amount of decorated cakes we eat daily and yearly will not be as much as the staple food, and the intake is also limited. Some Chinese-style pastries with colored seals on the surface also belong to the pastry color decoration, and some natural pigments can be allowed to be used, which are also allowed under the safety assessment, so there is no need to worry.

The main feature of the pastry is that it is used for the surface decoration of the pastry, but it does not belong to the surface decoration inside the tissue of the pastry. , plant carbon black, turmeric, etc. To present different beautiful colors in Taoshan skin mooncakes, natural pigments are usually used, and the net red briquettes that surprise consumers use natural pigments - vegetable carbon black.

Another major category of bakery products is bread. Bread is the staple food in Western countries. At present, the domestic consumption level is basically between meal replacement staple food and snacks. Only some natural pigments are allowed to be used. The number of natural pigment varieties is also less than in pastries. Such as: monascus yellow, monascus red, radish red, chili orange, chili red, blue ingot fruit red, gardenia yellow, vegetable carbon black, comfrey red these natural pigments can be used in cakes, but not in bread middle. Therefore, consumers should also read the label carefully when buying bread to see if the coloring used in the bread we buy meets the standards. Take the Internet celebrity product watermelon toast as an example. The market mainly uses natural fruit and vegetable tea powder or natural pigments. Fruit and vegetable tea pink uses strawberry powder, green uses spinach powder or matcha powder. When natural pigments are used, the red pigment is usually beetroot, cochineal or annatto, and the green pigment is usually copper chlorophyll sodium salt. When other pigments appear on the label of watermelon toast bread, it is recommended that you carefully check the types of pigments that are allowed to be used in bread to confirm whether there is any illegal use of pigments.

By comparing the requirements for the permitted use of pigments in the above-mentioned three types of bakery products: pastries, pastries, and bread, we can find that the more consumption of products that are close to the staple food, the more restricted and stricter the use of pigments will be. This is mainly because the country not only considers the safety and intake of the pigment itself when formulating regulations, but also considers the principle of necessity of use. Therefore, staple food products like steamed bread that we often eat are not allowed to use any food additives and pigments, while snack cakes have certain aesthetic needs and can be used in moderation. Baked products use the variety and limit requirements of pigments in accordance with regulations, and consumers do not need to worry about their safety. At the same time, as consumers pay attention to clean labels, many companies are also reducing the addition of unnecessary pigments or pursuing the bright color of their products, and many products have begun to use natural pigments to achieve color.