Book reviews of Colour in Food — Improving Quality Edited by D. B. MacDougall (Woodhead, Cambridge, UK, 2002). Pp. xiii + 378. Price £120.00. ISBN 1-85573-590-3

Abstract

There are 22 contributors including the Editor from five countries principally from academia, although one contributor is from government and three from industry. The book is divided into 13 chapters segregated between ‘Part 1. Perceiving and measuring colour’ and ‘Part II. Colour control in food’. Perception of colour as part of the sensory assessment of food, is covered in Chapter 1. Chapters 3–5 deal with colour measurement, colour models and use of reflectance techniques for colour measurement of foods, respectively. Chapter 6 deals with the important area of colour sorting of foods, and as the authors are from an industrial company that manufactures sorting equipment, this chapter contains many practical examples of electronic sorting systems as well as their performance and limitations. Chapter 7 deals with the chemistry of food colour from a theoretical standpoint ranging from outlining pigments originating from browning to molecular orbital theory in relation to colour. Chapters 8–10 deal, respectively, with the colour of vegetables, meat and fruit in each case dealing with practical issues such as the effects of processing and storage on the stability of colour. Chapter 11 deals topically with genetic manipulation of crop plants to add value by enhancing pigment content. It leads naturally to the next chapter that deals with food colours as food additives, covering synthetic as well as natural colours. Although this chapter by American authors has some focus on US Food, Drug and Cosmeticapproved colours, it describes the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives status when relevant and presents a reasonable international view. Chapter 13 looks ahead at developments in natural colours, and the concluding chapter discusses calibrated colour-imaging analysis of food. Overall, this is a comprehensive text on food colour that has been well thought out and carefully structured — it makes a unique contribution to this area and will be valued as a reference text.