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Ado on Caramel Color

The last thing I expect that can be cancer producing is the caramel color I used to think to come only from heated table sugar. But it turned out I was darnly mistaken.

EARLY last March news broke on the Philippine airwaves (through two of the country’s largest broadcasting outfits) over “cancer-producing” chemicals found in caramel, a coloring used in colas of at least two of the largest soda-makers worldwide with markets in the country.

I thought there was only one caramel, that is, the caramelized sugar, that we can prepare at home using the same process used in manufacturing tira-tira (caramelized candy bars), which graders in the provinces used to love during recess.

But the fact is far from that. There are four classes of caramel colors, says the European Union Scientific Committee for Food (SCF), the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA), and the Nordic Council of Ministers (TemaNord).

Class I is... [READ MORE]


This article appears in SunStar Cebu newspaper on 20 June 2012.
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