Determination of synthetic and natural colorants in selected green colored foodstuffs through reverse phase-high performance liquid chromatography

Abstract

The current study performed simultaneous identification of semisynthetic chlorophyllin (Cu-Chl) and synthetic food colorants in food matrices. The quantitative assessment of these synthetic and semisynthetic colorants was determined by using analytical method based on reverse-phase high-performance liquid chromatography (RP-HPLC) equipped with UV-visible detection. The concentration of Cu-Chl in hard candy was 3.334 mg/kg and 4.489 mg/kg in the soft candy, while contents of other colorants i.e. Tartrazine and Brilliant Blue were within 4.74-140.284 mg/kg. The extraction of Cu-Chl and synthetic colorants from different food matrixes was performed with a recovery range of 90-97% and RSD of 1-9%. Overall, the current developed RP-HPLC method could detect both green coloured synthetic and semisynthetic food colorants by a single run and could be used for monitoring different colorants in other complex matrices. This is the first report in India to determine Cu-Chl in foodstuffs and beverages by using RP-HPLC with UV-vis detector.

Keywords: Copper chlorophyllin; RP-HPLC; Synthetic and natural green colored food colorants; Tartrazine and Brilliant Blue.