The food is also a dye

In the near future, our mouth wiping lipstick, may be made with purple sweet potato, the jeans we wearing, may be the use of Radix Isatidis dyeing, the colors of clothes may be extracted from plants and flowers. Because the chemical dye is harmful to the human body, the experts will pay more attention to natural dyes. Institute of Food Science and Technology, Nanjing Agricultural University's Professor Han Yongbin unexpected finding in the study of vegetables, grain in bright colors, can also be achieved through technological means stored for a long time, it provides the basis for the production of food dyes.

That bright purple sweet potato color, people looked liked, but for a slight knowledge of the plant color people know that if the natural food pigment extracted, then the color is almost " see light die" because many pigment structure is unstable, it will break down when exposed to light.

Professor Han Yongbin said the near future,nological breakthroughs may make purple sweet potato red a long time to save, then stained with purple potato magic lipstick will come into our lives.

In the chemical dye popular today, more and more people miss the natural color, and in fact, vegetable dyes have been used in China for thousands of years. Ancient literature of the dye records, dating back to the Xia Dynasty earlier. Until the Warring States period, China's grass dyeing technology is quite mature, the use of dyed grass are: blue grass, madder, Lithospermum, etc.

Nanjing Institute of expert utilization of wild plants in the study found that many dye plants also the role of both herbs or evil, blue grass has bactericidal and detoxification, bleeding swelling effect; wormwood is good fortune in the role of civil society. More importantly, some plant dyes dyeing effect is not worse than the chemical dyes, for example, we often wear jeans, in the future can use Radix extract of indigo replaced.

By Sun Yamin