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posted by martyb on Sunday April 11 2021, @06:03PM   Printer-friendly
from the blue-goo dept.

Natural brilliant blue food coloring wrung out of red cabbage:

For decades, concerns have been raised about the safety of synthetic food dyes, and while the evidence against them is still unclear, natural colorings are generally preferred. Most of these pigments are sourced from plants, although a few come from crushed insects. But frustratingly, not all colors are easy to find in these places.

"Blue colors are really quite rare in nature – a lot of them are really reds and purples," says Pamela Denish, an author of the new study.

[...] As you might expect, most of the anthocyanins in red cabbage are red or purple, but there are tiny amounts of blue in there too. After about a decade of trying, a team of scientists from a range of institutions and food companies has now managed to extract useful amounts of blue by converting other anthocyanins.

Doing so required exactly the right enzyme, so the team screened a library of millions of them, and used computational simulations to explore about 100 quintillion potential protein sequences. Eventually, they were able to design the perfect enzyme for the job of converting the red and purple anthocyanins into blue ones.

The end result, the team says, is a natural cyan dye equivalent to the widely used synthetic FD&C Blue No. 1.

Journal Reference:
Pamela R. Denish, Julie-Anne Fenger, Randall Powers, et al. Discovery of a natural cyan blue: A unique food-sourced anthocyanin could replace synthetic brilliant blue [open], Science Advances (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abe7871)


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  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 11 2021, @08:09PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 11 2021, @08:09PM (#1136111)

    Why would that put pressure on the red cabbage market? What else are they going to do with the stuff? It's not like anyone eats it, after all.

    Well, I take that back -- I suppose some desperate people in the middle of a famine might eat some of it, after they get tired of the taste of boiled shoe leather.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 11 2021, @09:09PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 11 2021, @09:09PM (#1136130)

    Put a bit of soy and chillies into the pot, those shoes will taste much better. if you have time leave it to steep to better infuse into the soles.

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 11 2021, @11:39PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 11 2021, @11:39PM (#1136162)

      Sole food?

  • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday April 12 2021, @03:44PM

    by Freeman (732) on Monday April 12 2021, @03:44PM (#1136461) Journal

    Red cabbage is tasty. Makes good coleslaw, vegetable stew, meat stew for that matter, also who hasn't had boiled cabbage and potatos? Maybe, I'm from a weird place that eats real food?

    --
    Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"