Concluding remarks
The great interest on the health benefits of natural
pigments may have drawn attention away from their
coloring properties, but in the end is serving as a strong
justification for their retention as natural constituents of
foods during processing and storage and for their use as food and feed additives. Instability is a major problem,
leading to such measures as microencapsulation and
nanoencapsulation. Care must be taken, however, that
such alterations do not take away the natural connotation,
which is the other strong advantage of these pigments/
colorants. The safety of the products should also be
conclusively demonstrated.