SLIDE #12 – Corn Allergy list items #09 – Astaxanthin

ITEMS #09 – Astaxanthin
Astaxanthin is a versatile compound used from skin products to help reduce sunburn effects to food supplements for egg producing chickens. It can be found in cosmetics all the way to being part of color additives to your salmon and crab products at the food market. It is derived most often from corn, olive oil or soy beans. Astaxanthin can be marketed independently as a supplement or used in the above mentioned industries in processing and agriculture. It has a reddish color and belongs in a group called carotenoids.
FDA Guidelines have outlined the amounts allowed in our food products but it states that “…Certification of this color additive is not necessary for the protection of the public health…” There are a lot of additives and other assortments of containments actually allowed by public health standards and requires no thorough and transparent labeling or communication to the consumer base.
It is up to us to do our due diligence in researching the items we use and what the manufacturers are putting in our products we use. Keep an eye for color additives on labels when shopping as when that is present, you can almost guarantee some level of astaxanthin is being used for items with reddish tints and hues such as salmon and crab.

references
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3917265/

https://www.webmd.com/vitamins/ai/ingredientmono-1063/astaxanthin#:~:text=Astaxanthin%20is%20applied%20directly%20to,supplement%20for%20egg%2Dproducing%20chickens.

https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?fr=73.35

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