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Are You Ready for the Shift to Natural Food Colors?

At Imbibe, we work with R&D and brand teams navigating these tradeoffs every day across beverages, dairy alternatives, and functional systems.

That’s why we created a 2-minute Natural Color Readiness Assessment.

Take the Natural Color Readiness Assessment

The food and beverage industry is in the middle of a meaningful transition away from petroleum-based synthetic colors. Recent FDA enforcement discretion around “no artificial colors” claims has created new flexibility — but it has also surfaced an important question for many teams:

Are we actually ready to make this change, or just aware that it’s coming?

For some organizations, natural color conversion is already underway. For others, it’s still early — a topic being monitored rather than actively addressed. And for many, readiness depends less on regulatory intent and more on practical realities like formulation stability, flavor impact, cost targets, or supply chain constraints.

This is a quick, practical way to help teams understand where complexity is most likely to surface based on their current product systems and priorities — whether that’s sensory performance, shelf life, scalability, or operational readiness.

In just a few questions, the assessment helps you:

  • Clarify your current stage of readiness
  • Identify which tradeoffs may matter most for your products
  • See how your challenges compare to what other teams are encountering

Once completed, you’ll receive a brief summary highlighting your readiness profile and what that typically means as teams evaluate natural color alternatives.

If you’re exploring this shift — or expect it to become relevant soon — this is a useful place to start.

If you’re looking for a deeper breakdown of the FDA update itself, we’ve covered that separately.

Keep Reading:

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There's a reason blue raspberry still stops people in their tracks. And the ability to drop a consumer back into one of those moments — in the first sip of a functional beverage — turns out to be one of...
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Decoding Flavor: Imbibe’s Lauren Senne on Taste Modulation, Bitter Blockers, and What It Really Takes to Formulate Great Beverages

Taste modulation is its own discipline. Maskers and bitter blockers aren't the same thing — bitter blockers work at the receptor level, physically blocking the signal, while maskers shift the overall flavor system.
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Notice: Holiday Closure

Imbibe will be closed April 2, 3, 8, and 9. Please expect some delays in our response during these dates.

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