Safety evaluation of certain food additives - ipcs inchem

PAPRIKA EXTRACT 91
Table 1. Sales of dried chillies and paprika and paprika oleoresin in Europe
(AFEXPO)
Product Consumed as Sales (tonnes)
Dehydrated chilli and
paprika fruits
Paprika oleoresin (including
chillies if C. annuum)
Whole fruit, flakes, spice
powder
Total (food colour
plus spice)
Food colour (ASTA over
98 000 cu)
Spice extract, spice
oleoresin, flavour (oil soluble,
water soluble)
ASTA, American Spice Trade Association; cu, colour units.
Of the 1210 tonnes of paprika oleoresin sold annually, 16% was reported to
be used as a food colour (193 tonnes) (Table 1). Assuming that 7% of the paprika
extract was total carotenoids (13.5 tonnes) and assuming a European population
of 730 million (Population Reference Bureau, 2007), this would result in a potential
per capita mean dietary exposure to total carotenoids from use of paprika extract
as a food colour of 0.05 mg of total carotenoids per day.
3.2 Food balance sheet data (chillies and peppers)
Spain Other Europe Total
11 541 12 930 24 471
227 982 1210
56 136 193
171 845 1017
Food balance sheet data on the availability of “chillies and peppers, green”
and “chillies and peppers, dried” for consumption were submitted for 157 countries,
derived from Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
databases for 2004–2005 (http://faostat.fao.org). Converting the amount of fresh
peppers reported for each country to dried peppers by applying a factor of 10 and
adding to the dried pepper consumption, the total apparent consumption of dried
peppers and spices ranged from 0 to 24 g/day. Dietary exposures to total
carotenoids were estimated by combining the total amount of dried product after
applying a factor of 2 to convert to dry weight with the total carotenoid concentration
in peppers, reported to be between 5000 and 13 000 mg/kg dry weight (Deli et al.,
2001; Hornero-Mendez et al., 2002). The high carotenoid concentration of 13 000
mg/kg dry weight was for fully ripe, deep red peppers and is much higher than that
reported in food composition tables of 200–500 mg/kg for pepper or cayenne spices,
although these do have 8% water content rather than the 3–4% for the dry weight
samples, which may account for some of the difference.
The estimated total carotenoid intakes from peppers and chillies ranged
from