"food coloring" news and stories

Roy G. Biv is coming to breakfast.

Feeding off the fact that kids enjoy brightly colored foods, now your kids can literally taste the rainbow with these Technicolored creations. Blogger i am mommy creates an excellent start to an active day for the droopy-eyed tots, vowing "if you want to start out your day with the most gloriously happy children, just try these yummy rainbow pancakes."

With a raving endorsement like that, who could resist? All that's needed is the standard pancake recipe and food coloring -- lots of it.

End verdict? These flashy flapjacks are certainly worth waking up for. For more rainbow foods, visit cafemom.com.

Become a member of the Slashfood Flickr pool to get a shot of having your photos featured in Feast Your Eyes.

Australian food history blogger The Old Foodie has an interesting series on the history and meaning of food coloring, both naturally-occurring and man-made. A few choice tidbits:

- The crushed body of the cochineal insect, native to Mexico and South America, was the the original red food coloring. It's still possible to get cochineal dye, but it's expensive: It takes about 70,000 cochineal insects to make one pound of dye.

- Food coloring was sometimes used as paint for formal occasions. In 1846, renowned French chef Alexis Soyer painted a portrait of the Pasha of Egypt in pineapple cream for a state diner.

- Alfred Hitchcock once held a 'blue dinner party,' with blue-dyed soup, trout, chicken, venison, peaches, ice cream, bread and more. The guests were said to have been repelled.

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There's a new (well, old, but gaining momentum) controversy in the world of food: should food dyes be banned?

Many people want the dyes (with names like Red 40 and Blue 2, which sounds like a score from an episode of Hell's Kitchen) used in food banned because they think they might cause hyperactivity and ADHD. The Food and Drug Administration insists that study after study has shown that food dyes/artificial coloring is safe for kids and adults to eat. Though as CBS' Nancy Cordes says, a study a few years ago of 21 top studies done showed that the dyes could actually have an effect on the restlessness and attention problems in children. A non-profit group is asking for the dyes to be banned.

I have to admit that food dye is an ingredient I never even think about when buying packaged foods. How about you?

Food styling has always been a field that I would love to go into, but I lack the skills and have no clue how I would proceed even if I did. So instead, I just read my boyfriend's digital food photography books and think about the tricks that one might use in the profession. Sometimes I consider using them for my personal blog, but I believe it constitutes cheating. Anyway, I thought I'd share some interesting ones just in case anyone needs to make their food more beautiful (though in some cases, it will result in it being inedible!):

1) To make your coffee appear bubbly and hot, add a teaspoon of soapy water.
2) For an extra cheesy-looking slice of pizza, cook the pizza halfway, then cut out one slice and add extra cheese around the edge of the cut. Finish cooking the pizza, then photograph the extra cheesy piece as you lift it out.
3) Use food-colored mashed potatoes for ice cream. I would actually never do this because my likelihood of forgetting and eating mashed potatoes with chocolate sauce is way too high.

Any others, perhaps ones that don't render the food inedible?

While I'm not a parent myself, I've spent quite a lot of time in my life providing child care, and so I know that entertaining kids can sometimes be a bit of a challenge. One surefire way to keep the younger set happy is to give them either an art project or a cooking project. When you can combine the two and give them an artistic project that then turns into something they can eat, all the better!

Marie at Make and Takes did a really fun activity with her kids recently, in which she added food coloring to bowls of milk and used them as edible paint that they then used to color bread. The bread got toasted and eaten. They ate their painted toast dry, but you could butter it or give it a glaze with a bit of honey.

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