Incorporation of natural colorants obtained from edible flowers in yogurts

The substitution of artificial dyes by natural colouring agents is among the top concerns of food industry to fulfil current consuming trends, justifying the prospection of novel natural sources of these compounds. Herein, the hydrophilic extracts from rose, cornflower and dahlia were tested as potential substitutes to E163 (anthocyanin extract). Besides comparing the colouring capacity, the potential occurrence of changes in the chemical composition of yogurts (nutritional parameters, free sugars and fatty acids) was also assessed throughout storage (up to 7 days) and compared with a “blank” (free of any additive) yogurt formulation. In general, yogurts prepared with flower extracts, presented similar nutritional value and free sugars profile to those prepared with E163 and to the “blank” yogurt. Nevertheless, rose extract turned out to be the most suitable alternative to E163 as these two groups of yogurts had similar nutritional composition, free sugars and fatty acids composition, besides presenting close scores in colour parameters.The authors are grateful to the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT, Portugal) for financial support to CIMO (strategic project UID/AGR/00690/2013), to REQUIMTE (national funds and cofinanced by FEDER, under the Partnership Agreement PT2020), Tânia Pires (SFRH/BD/129551/2017) and João C.M. Barreira and L. Barros contracts. The GIP-USAL is financially supported by the Spanish Government through the project AGL2015-64522-C2-2-R. The authors are also grateful to FEDER-Interreg España-Portugal programme for financial support through the project 0377_Iberphenol_6_E; the European Structural and Investment Funds (FEEI) through the Regional Operational Program North 2020, within the scope of Project NORTE- 01-0145-FEDER-023289: DeCodE and Project Mobilizador Norte-01- 0247-FEDER-024479: ValorNatural®.