A quick spectrophotometric method for the identification of artificial food colorants, following isolation by adsorption on wool, is described. The method is based on a computational comparison of a measured UV/VIS colorant spectrum with a series of reference spectra. A calculated spectrum, which shows the best fit to the measured spectrum, is obtained from the reference spectra by means of linear regression analysis. The food colorants present in the sample are obtained from the calculation parameters of the linear regression analysis. The method is tested with mixtures of pure food colorants and selected artificially coloured foodstuffs. Agreement between measured and calculated spectra was excellent in most cases. All colorants present could be unambiguously identified.

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