Category: Colorants

According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), both Blue 1 and Blue 1 Lake are approved synthetic color additives used in a wide range of products. The fundamental difference lies in their solubility and composition, which dictates their specific applications. Understanding this distinction is key to knowing how these common colorants function in the items we consume and use daily.

While it can be produced synthetically in a lab, iron oxide red is fundamentally an inorganic compound that also occurs naturally as the mineral hematite. This dual nature means that depending on its source, iron oxide red can be either a natural pigment or an artificial one, not a dye in the traditional sense.