Certified food dyes approved by the FDA include colors synthesized from petroleum derivatives and even coal tar. Lots of big words there. Basically, it’s bad stuff, people. There are other food dyes based on natural ingredients that come from things you may not have ever thought to eat: Have you ever heard of carminic acid? You might not have, but it is a commonly used red food coloring, which comes from the dried, crushed bodies of pregnant female scale insects called “cochineal”. Food coloring = ingestion. Ingesting female pregnant insects? Uh, no thank you. Besides that grossness, I want my kids to be able to eat the eggs, and since we’re an artificially free family, those dyes are out, “natural” or not.
If you’re looking to what you CAN use, here’s some great, natural ideas that are fun to concoct and make not only vibrant eggs but allow your children to explore instead of dropping a tablet into water:
Red
Red onion skins, use a lot (boil with eggs)
Pomegranate juice
Grated Beets
Orange
Yellow onion skins (boil with eggs)
Yellow
Lemon or orange peel (boil with eggs)
Carrot tops (boil with eggs)
Celery seed (boil with eggs)
Ground cumin (boil with eggs)
Ground turmeric (boil with eggs) (be careful, turmeric stains)
Yellow Brown
Dill seeds (boil with eggs)
Brown
Strong coffee
Instant coffee
Black walnut shells (boil with eggs)
Yellow Green
Bright green apple peels (boil with eggs)
Green
Spinach leaves (boil with eggs)
grass (will come out faint, but worth it)
Red Cabbage and Turmeric (boil with eggs)
Blue
Canned blueberries and their juice
Red cabbage leaves (boil with eggs)
Blue/Teal
chopped red cabbage (boil with eggs, let sit a while)
Purple
grape juice
Red Cabbage with Beets (boil with eggs)
Violet Blue
Violet blossoms
Red onion skins, less amount than you need to make red (boil with eggs)
Lavender
Diluted purple grape juice
Violet blossoms plus squeeze of lemon (boil with eggs)
Pink
Beets, fresh or canned
Cranberries or cranberry juice
Raspberries
Red grape juice
Please note – when using juice, use it straight; frozen even can be stronger in color content. The longer you let the eggs soak, the deeper the color will be. You can use a scant amount of vegetable oil after the fact to make them shiny, or if you’d like some creative designs, crayons which resist coloring and rubber bands for different effects like tie-dye before or during the dying process. Combine some colors to alter and mix as well!
Have you done this too? I’d love to see what you did, and how yours turned out. Remember to have fun and share your pictures!
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