Voltammetric Determination of Various Food Azo Dyes Using Different Modified Carbon Paste Electrodes

Abstract

The food industries are developing very fast by improving the taste, odor, appearance of various food products. To do so, they are adding a variety of preservatives, sweeteners, and coloring agents and attracting a huge community of people. Dyes or coloring agents play an important role in enriching food's appearance, quality, and taste. Most used food coloring agents are synthetic azo dyes. They are cheaper than natural dyes, therefore, they are used in huge amounts very frequently. Most of the azo dyes like Amaranth, Tartrazine, Allura Red AC, and Metanil Yellow can cause serious health issues for all the living system, and therefore the use of them in food should be controlled, or the optimum level of these dyes in food and beverages should be measured. Many methods like thin layer chromatography, mass spectroscopy, spectrophotometry, capillary electrophoresis, cyclic voltammetry, high-performance liquid chromatography are used to detect azo dyes in the food. But cyclic voltammetry method is one of the simple, robust, highly selective, accurate, high speed, economical, and highly sensitive methods to determine the presence of azo dyes in foods. The main subject of this review article is the detection of several azo dyes utilizing modified carbon paste electrodes and cyclic voltammetry.