Our menu is colorful. There’s the deep magenta of a beet smoothie, the bold green of a spirulina blend, and a blue that looks almost too bright to be real.

It’s real, though. Every one of those colors comes from food, and none of them comes from artificial dyes.

Why we skip artificial dyes

Synthetic dyes are in food for one reason: looks. They add no nutrition or flavor, and nothing your body can use. They’re cosmetic, and they’ve crept into much of what people eat every day.

At Aubergine, an ingredient has to earn its place on the plate. We use the same rule when we leave out seed oils and refined sugar and when we choose non-GMO ingredients. Artificial dyes don’t pass that test, so we don’t use them.

The color stays, though. We just get it from ingredients that bring something else along with them.

Where our color comes from

Beet powder: deep reds and pinks.
Beets get their jewel-toned color from betalains, natural plant pigments found in only a handful of vegetables. A spoonful of beet powder turns a smoothie a vivid crimson and adds the beet’s natural, earthy sweetness too.

Green spirulina: rich, deep greens.
Spirulina is a blue-green algae that people have eaten for centuries. It gets its color from chlorophyll and a pigment called phycocyanin. It also adds plant protein, which artificial food coloring can’t do.

Blue spirulina: bright, natural blue.
Real blue is one of the rarest colors in food. Blue spirulina is phycocyanin extracted from spirulina, and it gives that ocean-blue color with a very mild flavor.

And more from the plant world.
We also use fruits, vegetables and other whole-food ingredients to get the rest of our color. If something on our menu is bright, there’s a real ingredient behind it.

Taste the color

You can find beet powder at work in our Beet Dukkah Salad and Beetroot Smoothie, green spirulina in our Hi Vibe and Spirulina Caesar salads, and blue spirulina in our Blue Wave Smoothie.

Feeling better starts with what’s on the plate

We think food should leave you feeling better than before you ate it. That means being honest about everything in it, including where the color comes from.

So when something on your tray is bright red, green or blue, you can be sure it came from a plant and not a bottle.

Find your nearest Aubergine Kitchen and taste the difference →