In food industry, color additives are used for various purposes. These additives are used to maintain and enhance the color specific to the product, to provide the desired color in the product or to improve the product, to control the color deterioration, to increase the flavor value and to make the appearance more attractive. However, it should not be harmful to health in any way and should not be used as a product to show quality and mislead consumers. Consumers generally make decisions based on food products, mostly on sensory properties and on the color of food. Since color variations in food generally affect the preferences of consumers, dye additives are widely used in food products.

The usage amounts of artificial food dyes which are used frequently to give color to food are very important for consumer health. The Turkish Food Codex Regulation issued by the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock in 2011 is very important in this respect. In this way, the use of paint in food is controlled.

Many synthetic food dyes have potentially toxic properties. Legal restrictions are imposed for this purpose. For the safety of foods, reliable and accurate methods should be used in the determination of synthetic food dyes. Today, consumers are much more sensitive to synthetic food dyes, and new techniques for detecting and measuring such dyes need to be developed and widespread.

In the laboratories, the amount of dye in food products is analyzed within the scope of chemical tests. Many methods are used in these analyzes. These include the spectrophotometric method applicable to each dye. In this method, the photometer is used and the amount of substance in the solution is determined using the amount of light passing through or retained by the solution. These analyzes are based on the standards issued by national and international organizations.