INTRODUCTION

Food coloring, or color additive,( Douglas Krick, 1999) is any dye, pigment or
substance that imparts color when it is added to food or drink. The majority of natural dyes
are vegetable and flower dyes from plant sources roots, berries, bark, leaves, wood and other
organic sources such as fungi and lichens. Dyes extracted from plants contain many different
pigments, and thus are not the "pure" forms of pigment used in today's chemical dyes. These
impurities create rich and sometimes unexpected color, that can never be duplicated.
Chlorophylls are the green pigments of leafy vegetables. They also give green color to the skin
of apples and other fruits. Chlorophylls a and b are the members of the chlorophyll family in
food plants and serve as a functional pigment in photosynthesis.Carotenoids contribute to the
red, yellow, and orange colors in many fruits and vegetables. This group of compounds includes
carotenes, which are strictlyhydrocarbons. It may be used in bakery goods, cheese, ice cream,
margarine,salad dressings, and other foods. Lycopene is another carotenoid that is the red
colorantin tomatoes. Anthocyanins are responsible for the blue, pink, red, and violet colors in
fruits andvegetables. This group is playing an increasingly larger colorant role for various foods.
Color additives are used in foods for many reasons including offset color loss due to exposure to
light, air, temperature extremes, moisture and storage conditions. Besides, it also correct natural
variations in color, enhance colors that occur naturally and finally provide color to colorless and
"fun" foods. Paper chromatography is a technique used to separate, isolate, and identify chemical
components of a compound. Experiment was carried out( Martin& James,1987) to investigate
the different colour pigment from natural dyes by using the technique of paper chromatography
and they discover that different pigment produce different colour. Furthermore, experiment also
have been carried out (Keith Barnand ,1991) to extract the dye pigment of natural dye by using
the method of solvent extraction .Solvent extraction is a method for separating a substance from
one or more others by using solven. The main objectives of our project are to show that color
additives are recognized as an important part of many foods we eat.Besides, we want to use the
process of paper chromatography to separate the pigments in various markers and then determine
the R
f
value for each color on our chromatogram .Finally , we are going to use the method of
solvent extraction to extract the dyes from various type of plants for colouration of food.