Question

How to extract pink colors from fruits and vegetables?

Answer 1

Fruits are dried and seeds extracted from them are crushed. The seeds have a coating of an oily paste that contains bixin. Bixin is yellow orange carotenoids. It is extracted using aqueous alkaline solution and vegetable oil solvent. 


Vegetable oil solvent gives oil soluble bixin and alkaline solution gives water soluble norbixin while Propylene Glycol yields a combination of both bixin and norbixin.