Purple Raspberries

Sometimes the weirdest thoughts hit me when I least expect it. On this occasion it was while eating a yogurt (read as yoghurt). The yogurt in question was a Dannon 'Light & Fit' Raspberry yogurt.

While eating it I noticed the color of the yogurt was a purple color. Not one I would really associate with raspberries, especially since the raspberries on the container were red.

Plain yogurt is white. Raspberries are red. In theory, if you mix the two you will get a pink. Add more raspberries and you can get it back to a red shade. So why was the yogurt purple?

According to the 'Nutritional Information' label there are two food colorings added to the yogurt. They are Red 40 and Blue 1. Red and blue mixed will give a purple. SO it all made sense. But that is not where I stopped. Why was Blue 1 added to a yogurt that really doesn't need it?

I checked out all I could find on the food coloring Blue 1. Nothing. Well, nothing other than it is used for coloring. It has no other purpose. And as an added bonus fact, 95% of Blue 1 dye can be found in your feces. Even your body doesn't want it. And as another reason for it not to be in yogurt, a few countries have previously banned it: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.

So why does Dannon, and other yogurt producers put it in raspberry yogurt? There seems to be no reason. Maybe if it was a blue raspberry yogurt it would make sense. But as can be seen from the image below that is not the case. So the mystery remains.