Natural Dyes

Natural Dyes for Healthy Life

lionbrand.comShare

Some examples of natural dyes used for coloring foods (Quoted from the book to make natural dyes and Elfi work hidayat nur anis saati issue Trubus Agrisarana 2006. Could be obtained at bookstores across Indonesia) are:

•  Carotene, produces an orange color to red. Typically used to color products such as oil and grease cooking oil and margarine. Can be obtained from carrots, papaya and so on.

• BIKSIN, giving yellow like butter. Biksin obtained from the seeds of Bixa orellana tree which is found in the tropics and is often used to color butter, margarine, corn oil and salad dressing.

• CARAMEL, which is dark brown is the result of the hydrolysis (breakdown) of carbohydrates, sugar, lactose and malt syrup. Caramel consists of 3 types, namely caramel-resistant acid that is often used for carbonated beverages, liquid caramel for bread and biscuits, as well as a dry caramel. Coconut sugar which functions as a sweetener, also gives a brownish red color on drink coconut water or ice cendol

• CHLOROPHYLL, producing green color, obtained from the leaves. Widely used for food. Nowadays even began to be used on a variety of health products. Chlorophyll pigments are abundant in leaves (eg suji leaves, pandan, cinnamon etc). Suji leaves, pandan leaves, and cinnamon leaves are used as a producer of green color for different types of cake snacks. Besides producing a beautiful green color, they also have a distinctive fragrance

• Anthocyanins, producing red, orange, purple and blue found in many fruits and flowers like roses, water henna, hibiscus, flower beads / kana, chrysanthemum, pelargonium, china aster, and apple, cherry, grape, strawberries, also can be found in the mangosteen fruit and sweet potato tubers. Telang flowers, produces purplish blue color. Starfruit flowers produce red. The use of natural dyes, such as anthocyanin pigments are still limited to some food products, such as beverage products (fruit, juice and milk).
• curcumin, derived from turmeric as a spice kitchen and gives a yellow color to dishes that we make.

Manufacturing natural color is actually very easy. The materials that can be used as a natural dye are ground, you can also use a regular blender or pestle. Then add some water, squeeze and filter it with a filter. To make brighter colors, you can add a little lime or lemon juice. Having obtained the juice dyes, then they are stored in the refrigerator or freezer.
If the dye is derived from coconut sugar which is also used as a dye sweetener, you must select a good quality coconut sugar so you don't need to filter it, then dissolved in cold water or hot water for quick result. Meanwhile, to make green dye and also as fragrance can be used the combinations of pandan and suji leaves. Both leaves are pounded with a little water, wring it out, then strain.

Pigments Concentrated Liquid

To make the Concentration it is required better tools such as the solvent petroleum ether (PE), filter paper, vacuum filters, vacuum evaporator (to evaporate the solvent), refrigerator.

• To filter the Extract obtained from the simple way extraction, we can use filtered vacuum in order to accelerate the separation between pigments and waste materials. Filtration process is done using filter paper.
• Add 2% petroleum ether, in order to separate the pigment anthocyanin with other materials (non-anthocyanin)
• Take the colors that exist in petroleum ether then evaporated with a vacuum evaporator with a temperature of 40-50 C.
• Generated more pure concentrated pigments.

Pigment Powders

Manufacture of pigment powder made by adding fillers (fillers) such as starch, dextrin or gum arabic and used tools spary drier. Dyes are extracted with petroleum ether mixed with dextrin (10-30%) then put in a spray drier with inlet temperature of 100 - 1100C and outlet temperature of 50 - 600C. machine is turned on with a vacuum pump to reduce pigment damage by oxygen. The resulting pigment powder then can be packed with dark plastic (aluminum foil) and stored in a place that is not damp.