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ColorMaker Beet have been cultivated as a table vegetable in all temperate climes for many thousands of years. Who has not experienced the deep red-purple color of the broth after boiling beets? In traditional processing, the beets are prepared by blanching, cutting, hydraulic pressing of the root and vacuum concentrating the filtered expressed liquid to 60-65% total solids. The juice can be spray-dried to a free-flowing pink-red powder with maltodextrin added as a carrier to obviate the stickiness one usually gets with high sucrose containing liquids. The pigments extracted are made up of yellow fractions and a red fraction chemically called betanin, representing 75-95% of the total color present.

ColorMaker Annatto is orange-yellow color and is extracted from the seed coats of a tropical tree, Bixa orellano. The tree has heart-shaped leaves and small pink to white flowers bearing pods, which on maturing, contain hundreds of rust-colored seeds. The rust-colored resinous material surrounding the seed is the source of annatto. The chemical name for the color principle of annatto is Bixin. It is hard to believe that the rich golden color of cheddar cheese actually comes from a plant.

ColorMaker Beta-Carotene has been used for centuries to provide a yellow to orange color to foods and cosmetics. Beta-carotene is probably the best known of the largest family of pigments produced by nature, the Carotenoids. Although abundant and extractable from various sources, the beta-carotene utilized by the color industry is made synthetically. This is a relatively new development, with commercial production starting around 1954. This form of beta-carotene, as well as canthaxanthin and apo-8’-carotenal similarly synthesized, are permitted for use as color additives in the US and Europe and are usually referred to as “nature-identical.”.

ColorMaker Grape is the single most abundant fruit harvested in the world from which a natural color is commercially obtained. Grapes are highly pigmented with anthocyanins, a pool of colorants responsible for the purple, violet, blue, magenta, red and orange color of many fruits, vegetables and flowers. Anthocyanins are often extracted from the grape skin remaining after wine crushing or from the "leas," the sediment at the bottom of barrels from the wine aging process. Most recently, additional sources of anthocyanins have become available, from the grape juice of selected varieties, from vegetable juice extracts (purple carrots, red cabbages, purple sweet potatoes, red radishes, and purple corn), and from berries (elderberries and chokeberries).