A team of scientists claims to have cracked the code to a natural blue food dye. Some colours of artificial dyes are easy to replace, such as turmeric for yellow or beets for red, but finding a non-purplish natural source for the colour blue has stymied food scientists, reports CBC’s Quirks & Quarks. In a study published in the journal Science Advances, a team of scientists says it has found a way to produce true blue, thanks to a pigment called an “anthocyanin” in red cabbage. The anthocyanin they found was close to the cyan blue they sought, but not perfect. So the researchers tried a method found in some blue flowers when anthocyanins are combined with a metal ion such as aluminum.
