Trends and Challenges in the Industrialization of Natural Colorants

Consumer demands and their preferences for naturally derived colorants have increased exponentially and are widely associated with the image of healthy, safe and high-quality products, which constitutes a great challenge to food industries and related food science research institutions. Moreover, such demands have resulted in searches to increase the availability of these compounds. Despite the intense search for plant and microbial sources and efforts to increase extraction yield, few natural colorants have reached available the market. Physicochemical instability during the extraction and storage of natural colorants is a major limitation; some non-conventional extraction and encapsulation technologies are being advocated to minimize this problem. Thus, improving the techniques used for the encapsulation of sensitive or labile ingredients is important to make colorants and, consequently, their bioactive proprieties, accessible to consumers.