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Structures of Some Food Dyes.
Structures of Some Food Dyes.
Name
allura
tartrazine
Yellow 6
Blue 1
Blue 2
indigo carmine
indigotine
Color Name
food red 17
food yellow 4
acid yellow 23
food yellow 3
acid yellow 6
food blue 2
acid blue 9
food blue 1
The numbers don't match. The numbers for the blue dyes are reversed. FD&C
Blue 1 is food blue 2 and FD&C Blue 2 is food blue 1.
Web Links
http://www.red40.com/pages/chemistry.html
This site has a brief discussion of dyes but the most impressive aspect of this site
are the structures. There are ball and stick models of Red 40, Yellow 5 and
Yellow 6 plus a banned dye, Sudan 1. If you roll the cursor over the structure of
Red 40 it turns into Yellow 6. This allows you to see the differences in the
structures of the two dyes and how similar they really are. The same is true for
the other structures.
Wikipedia has pages on the various dyes. There is little chemistry given except
for indigo which is not a food dye. If you want to know all the various names for a
particular dye, you will find it. Beware of any information about health hazards
the only references given are to newspaper articles, not to genuine scientific
studies. Even when Wikipedia sounds good, it may be incorrect.