Safety of tartrazine in the food industry and potential protective factors

Tartrazine belongs to the colors raising significant concerns regarding consumer safety at low doses relevant for real-life human exposure. Scientific literature continues to grow after the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) re-evaluation in 2009 and the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) in 2016. Therefore, this review aims to collect recent knowledge on the toxicity issues of tartrazine, namely its genotoxicity, cytotoxicity, carcinogenicity, reproductive, developmental, and neurotoxicity, alterations of blood biochemical parameters, and hematotoxicity. The second part of the review covers the potential protective factors against the toxic effects of tartrazine based on the hypothesis of mitigation of oxidative stress induced by the color. The reviewed protective factors are crocin, royal jelly, fish oil, honey, acetylsalicylic acid, black caraway, blackthorn, turmeric, vitamin E, and riboflavin. This review concludes that tartrazine seems safe under the current acceptable daily intake (ADI) and the evidence on the potential protective factors is insufficient to reach any conclusion regarding their use.