You may have seen our recent email about our little goof with the pink and purple stars in a recent batch of Truly Fruity Stars.
It got us thinking about a question we hear a lot:
Where does the color in our cereal actually come from?
In the case of Truly Fruity Stars, those colors come from plants. The pink stars get their rosy hue from ube (purple sweet potato), and the purple stars come from cocoa stars coated in that same naturally colored mixture.
In other words, the color in your bowl comes from real food.
Recently, the FDA announced a change related to food coloring that’s getting a lot of attention. The agency is taking steps to move away from petroleum-based synthetic dyes — ingredients like Red 40, Yellow 5, Yellow 6, and Blue 1 that are commonly used to make foods brighter and more vibrant.
We think that’s a good thing. Moving away from petroleum-derived dyes is an important step in the right direction.
But the update also changes how the FDA plans to enforce claims like “no artificial colors.” Going forward, enforcement will mainly focus on petroleum-based dyes.
That means companies may remove dyes like Red 40 and still use other color additives — while still being able to say their products contain “no artificial colors.”
And that’s where things get a little more nuanced.
There isn’t just a choice between petroleum dyes and colors that come directly from food. There’s actually a wide spectrum of ingredients that can be used to change how food looks.
On one end are petroleum-based synthetic dyes.
On the other end are colors that come from foods like fruits, vegetables, and spices — things like sweet potato, beet, turmeric, or paprika.
But in the middle are a number of other additives that technically aren’t petroleum-based, yet are still used primarily to alter the appearance of food. Ingredients like calcium phosphate or titanium dioxide, for example, can be used to make foods appear brighter or more uniformly colored.
So while the move away from petroleum dyes is encouraging, it doesn’t automatically mean color in food is coming from real food ingredients.
At Love Grown, we try to keep things simple.
When we use ingredients that influence the color of our cereal — like sweet potato in Truly Fruity Stars — we intentionally choose plant-based ingredients derived from real food.
They’re safe color additives, but they’re also ingredients that come from fruits and vegetables rather than synthetic dyes or highly processed alternatives.
We’re not trying to make cereal brighter just to catch your eye in the grocery aisle.
For us, the goal is simple: make cereal that tastes great using ingredients that make sense.
That means no petroleum-based dyes. No artificial colors. And no adding ingredients just to make something look a certain way.
If a cereal ends up pink or purple because of fruits and vegetables, we think that’s pretty great.
And if those colors happen to make breakfast a little more fun, that’s a bonus.
Either way, the color in your bowl should come from food.
