Nutritional Study of Some Food Coloring Agents on Experimental Rats

Abstract

This study was designed to recognize the biochemical and histological alterations in the liver and kidney of male rats due to daily oral intake (for 8 weeks) of beet and curcumin extracts as natural red and yellow color, edicol erythrosine and sunset yellow as recommended synthetic colors and two unknown commercial coloring agents (red and yellow). The effect of admissible daily intake (ADI) and overdose (5 times) of the synthetic recommended and commercial colors was also investigated. Compared with the control group, the GBW % of rats indicated significant (p<0.05) increase in all studied groups except that given the natural beet extract and that given ADI of edicol erythrosine. No significant differences were detected in the relative kidney weights between groups. Rats that administrated overdose of the studied synthetic colors showed significant increase in the lipid profile of blood including total cholesterol, low density lipoproteins (LDL), high density lipoproteins (HDL). The obtained histopathological changes in liver and kidney of rats administrated overdose of colorants were associated with elevation of urea, creatinine, alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST), which were strictly related to the injury of kidney and liver functions. The present study demonstrated that beet extract could be used as alternative natural red colorant, whereas curcumin extract need additional long-term studies because of the elevation in urea and AST levels in addition to massive aggregative of inflammatory cells infiltration in the portal area of liver of rats administrated the 7.87 mg curcumin /Kg BW. Also, the present study sheds light on the nutritional hazards in the liver and kidney due to the uncontrolled use of synthetic color.