Food Color From Nature

Santa must think I’m a dud.
Every year I dutifully set out a plate of plain white sugar cookies and milk. Star-shaped, sprinkled with chunky turbinado sugar, they’re tasty enough, but even I’ve got to admit they aren’t the most festive.
But after a day spent in the kitchen rolling out the dough and cutting the shapes, the last thing I want to do is top my homemade treats with red and green synthetic food dye. Synthetic, as in chemical, as in derived from petroleum byproducts. As in yum — not!
But this year is gonna be different.
This year on my grocer’s shelf, right next to the box of erythrosine, commonly known as Red Dye No. 3 or red food coloring, set a box of 100-percent plant-based food colors.

The red is made from the juice of purple carrots and beets, the yellow from turmeric, the orange from annatto and the blue from red cabbage juice. Guaranteed not to taste like veggies, these preservative-free food dyes need no refrigeration but once opened should be used in entirety.
Since Color Garden’s food colors mimic nature they are not as saturated as those manufactured in a lab, but you can still achieve the same cheery reds and greens as the artificial food colors. The colors are made to mix like paint so you can experiment and have some fun.
When I talk about everything in moderation, it is food that I am referring to, not chemicals. There’s simply no room in my diet for a product that has been criticized widely as a carcinogen and banned in many countries.
Now that I’ve found these natural food colors, my holiday baking will take on a whole different hue and that jolly old elf will have no doubt that I am in the Christmas spirit.
Do you avoid synthetic food dyes? —Karen