en Food Safety and Hygiene Food Safety and Hygiene پژوهشي Original Article <div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:14px;"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style="line-height:1;"><b><span style="color:black">Background: </span></b><span style="color:black">Unconsciousness and misuse of synthetic and non-permitted food colorants are considered widespread fraud and a serious threat to the health of the community, especially young children. The purpose of this study was to determine the status of three non-permitted food colorants in confectionery products in Zanjan.</span><br> <b><span style="color:black">Methods: </span></b><span style="color:black">As a cross-sectional study, 150 samples of Confectionery products (candies, polki, pastilles, chocolate confectioneries such as Smarties, drag&eacute;es, freezer pops, and cakes) were randomly sampled from different supply centers in Zanjan, during the summer of 2020. Color analysis was performed by the thin-layer chromatography (TLC) method. Finally, the retention value (RF criterion) was used to detect color type.</span><br> <b><span style="color:black">Results: </span></b><span style="color:black">In this study, among all samples were collected from the supply centers including confectionaries and supermarkets, 47 samples (31%) contained at least one or three banned yellow synthetic dyes including tartrazine (E 102), amaranth (E 123) and chocolate brown HT E 155) with a misuse rate 42%, 31% and 20%, respectively. Tartrazine had the highest misuse rate among the studied dyes.</span><br> <b><span style="color:black">Conclusion: </span></b><span style="color:black">The study concludes that unauthorized synthetic food colors-specifically tartrazine, amaranth, and chocolate brown-are widely present in confectionery products in Zanjan, Iran, with 80% of samples containing at least one of these additives.</span></span></span></span></div> Amaramth, Brown chocolate dye, Confectionery products, Synthetic color additives, Tartrazine, 52 57 http://jhehp.zums.ac.ir/browse.php?a_code=A-10-47-13&slc_lang=en&sid=1 Yaser Shahimoridi shahmoradi86@yahoo.com 100319475328460016563 100319475328460016563 No Department of Food Safety and Hygiene, School of Public Health, Zanjan University of Medical Sciences, Zanjan, Iran. Hassan Hassanzadazar hassanzadazar_h@zums.ac.ir 100319475328460016564 100319475328460016564 Yes Department of Food Safety and Hygiene, School of Public Health, Zanjan University of Medical Sciences, Zanjan, Iran. Majid Aminzare m.aminzare@zums.ac.ir 100319475328460016565 100319475328460016565 No Department of Food Safety and Hygiene, School of Public Health, Zanjan University of Medical Sciences, Zanjan, Iran. Jafar Taran j.taran_541@yahoo.com 100319475328460016566 100319475328460016566 No Department of Food Safety and Hygiene, School of Public Health, Zanjan University of Medical Sciences, Zanjan, Iran. Mahsa Hashemi mahsa.ha71@gmail.com 100319475328460016567 100319475328460016567 No Department of Food Safety and Hygiene, School of Public Health, Zanjan University of Medical Sciences, Zanjan, Iran.