Children are the biggest consumers of desserts and we want to ensure our desserts are safe for them given there is a growing trend of people developing cancers earlier in life, in particular gastrointestinal cancer. There have been study findings supporting a positive correlation between early onset GI cancers and food additives like high salt and fat content food, artificial colours and preservatives due to disruptions to the gut microbiome.

Artificial Colours:

Do you know that artificial colours are petroleum derivatives? Meaning they are derived from petroleum / coal tar. Some colours have been withdrawn throughout the years due to their ability to induce cancers in animals studies.

Some artificial food colourings especially colours that are banned in EU are still widely used in some places like Australia and/or the UK and/or the USA. For example, E171/ colour 171 (a whitener associated with inflammatory bowel disease and colon cancer) and other colours that may have adverse effects on activity and attention in children like E129/Red 40, E102/FDC Yellow 5/Tartrazine, E110/FDC Yellow 6/Sunset Yellow.

Other artificial colours banned by at least one EU country and are required to carry a similar warning label of possibly contributing to adverse effects on activity and attention in children include: E104/ Quinine Yellow, E122/ Azorubine or Carmoisine, E123/ Amaranth (banned in the USA), E124/ Ponceau 4R, E153/ Carbon Blacks or Vegetable Carbon (banned in the USA.)

Most artificial colours are made up of at least one or a mix of these implicated colours. The easiest desserts to decorate with natural colours are things that have some water content because most natural colours are water soluble e.g. cupcakes, macarons and to a certain extent royal icing and fondant cookies. The most difficult to go natural are chocolate dipped items like cakepops. Bold and deep colours like red and black require a large amount of colouring to acheive and the colour can sometimes be tasted in the decorated product.

Palm Oil

Do you also know that palm oil has found its way into our baked goods? There are now buttercreams made from hydrogenated palm oils that are ladden with preservatives which enables them to keep for a long time without going off. Most chocolate coatings that are applied to cakepops and chocolate dipped confectionaries in the market are also made from compound chocolate a.k.a. fake choclolate (Nestle melts/ choc buttons/ candy melts) which is made from hydrogenated palm oil. Aside from the alarming fact that they don’t contain chocolate, they are also made of partially or fully hydrogenated palm oil or cottonseed oil which are associated with raising the level of bad cholesterols and contributing to heart disease. Nestle for example will only list hydrogenated vegetable fat on food packaging instead of listing Palm oil. I had to email them to confirm that it is palm oil that is used in its choc buttons and to a lesser extent its choc chips. Partially hydrogenated fats directly result in trans fat which is recognised by the WHO as a hazard to heart health. The FDA has banned the use of partially hydrogenated oils since 2015 for this reason but the trick is food containing 0.5% or less of trans fat/ serving can list trans fat as 0g due to rounding down rule. Any hydrogenated fats will also raise the level of bad cholesterol and suppress the level of good cholesterol hence contributing to heart disease.