Optimizing the Appearance of Plant-based Foods Using Natural Pigments and Color Matching Theory

The appearance of a food significantly affects consumer’s liking and buying decisions. For next-generation plant-based foods, consumers expect them to have the same appearance (color and opacity) as the animal-based products they replace. Therefore, matching the color of plant-based foods to their conventional animal-based counterparts could increase their liking and acceptance by consumers. In this study, three plant-derived food colorants, red beet (red), turmeric (yellow), and butterfly pea flower (blue), were blended to match the color of raw meat, cooked meat, cooked whole egg, and cheddar cheese. Initially, the pigments were incorporated into three separate emulsions representing the three primary colors (red, yellow, and blue). The Kubelka-Munk and color matching theories were then used to determine the amount of each emulsion required to match the spectral reflectance of the animal-based products. Our results show that color matching theory could be used to formulate plant-based emulsions with similar optical properties to animal-based products, including chroma and lightness. However, some discrepancies were observed, which may have been due to differences in the scattering of light by the complex food matrices in animal-based products. The color matching approach developed in this study could be useful for the development of plant-based food products with improved appearances, thereby expanding their consumer appeal.