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How Do You Get Food Colouring Off Your Skin?

How Do You Get Food Colouring Off Your Skin?

Last Updated on 17th December 2021 by

Food colouring can be a joy to work with, adding a much-needed dash of colour to your dishes. It can help you change the colour of food or make the existing colour more vibrant and appealing.

Colourful food certainly has definite appeal. Certain colours tell our brain that the food is ripe, ready to eat, and delicious. Other colours tell the brain that the food is spoiled or not good for eating. Using the right food colouring is crucial when you want to make your food look decorative, exciting, or enticing.

When working with food colouring, it can sometimes get on your clothes or your skin. Because it’s a powerful dye that is meant to permanently colour food, it may be tough to get off your skin. How do you get food colouring off your skin?

I’ll share with you a few methods for removing food colouring from your skin. Even if you don’t use one of these methods right away, they can still be effective. You might not notice the food colouring on your skin immediately, or you may just not have time to remove it completely when it first happens.

Food colouring will come off your skin eventually, as your current skin cells die, fall off, and are replaced, but if you want it off faster, try one of these methods.

Baking Soda and Vinegar

This combination is excellent for removing many different kinds of stains, dyes, and colours. It’s used for cleaning everything from clothing to floors to countertops to even your skin.

When you get food coloring on your skin and want to use vinegar and baking soda to remove it, start by washing the stained area with soap and warm water. Try to lather up the soap to get rid of as much of the food colouring as you can.

Then, place a little bit of white vinegar in a bowl and dip a clean cloth into the vinegar. Rub at the stained area with the cloth, and if you start to feel a little burning in your hands, you can dilute the vinegar with a little water.

Continue to rub at the food colour stain until it becomes lighter. If your washcloth starts to get stained too much, you can replace it for another. If you don’t, you can end up just moving the stain around on your skin.

Next, run the stained part of your body under running water and use the vinegar and washcloth again to help reduce the stain’s appearance. You can also use baking soda in conjunction with this method. Just add a couple tablespoons of baking soda to water and mix.

Then, apply the paste you’ve made from that onto the affected area. Rub it into your skin for about a minute and then rinse off the baking soda paste using running water. It may take a little while to rinse off, as it can adhere to you pretty strongly.

If there’s still a stain on your skin, you can repeat this process until it’s gone.

Toothpaste

This is another tried and true method for getting rid of most kinds of stains. Rubbing some toothpaste into the affected area is very effective for removing even powerful dyes like food coloring. Before you apply the toothpaste, however, clean the area with soap and running water.

Now, there are lots of different kinds of toothpaste you could use, but whitening toothpaste the non-gel variety is the best kind. This will have abrasive components that are excellent at creating friction to remove stains.

The whitening toothpaste has brightening, bleaching chemical agents that are good for eliminating stains as well. We should only need a small amount of toothpaste, and once you apply it, you should spread it around and rub it into the skin.

Keep massaging it into your skin for a couple of minutes and then add more toothpaste as necessary. Once it looks like the stain is gone or greatly reduced, you can use running water to wash the affected area. Add toothpaste again and massage once more if needed.

Shaving Cream

Another household item you can use as a cleaning agent for food colouring on your skin is shaving cream. It probably isn’t one you would have thought of, but it’s actually quite effective at removing food colouring stains left behind on your skin.

Once again, you’ll be washing with lukewarm water and soap to start, trying to get rid of as much of the food colouring stain as possible. That’s likely not going to be enough to remove the stain from your skin completely, though.

Cover the affected area on your skin with shaving cream, making sure you get a good lather. Then, rub it that for a couple of minutes to let it work the stain out. One of the components of shaving cream is peroxide, which is an excellent stain lifter.

After you grab the shaving cream into your skin for a few minutes, rinse with soap and running water, and then repeat the process if the stain remains.

Final Tips

I want to share with you a few more suggestions on how to get food colouring off your skin. While food colouring does stain skin, the staining is not usually very severe. It shouldn’t take long for the food colouring to come off on its own- probably just a couple days.

One of the most effective methods for getting food colouring off your skin is to simply wash your skin with soap and water. Repeatedly scrubbing at your skin, particularly when using an abrasive scrub pad, will do wonders for getting rid of food colouring stains. It may take a few washes to get rid of the food colouring, but soap and water will do wonders in this instance.

If you want to avoid food colouring stains on your skin in the future, you can try baking with gloves and long sleeves to protect your skin. Any kind of latex, rubber or disposable gloves should work just fine when you’re dealing with food colouring and want to keep your hands clean. Tight gloves that are a close fit will help you avoid spills and prevent messes, as you are less likely to bump things with tight fitting gloves.

Also make sure that you keep food colouring containers closed when not in use. They could easily spill over or come into contact with your skin if they are left uncovered. You can also wear an apron to protect your clothes from food colouring stains, as it can be a little trickier to get stains out of clothing than it is in dealing with skin.

Some colours stain more severely than others. Black food colouring tends to stain the most and leave behind stains that are harder to get rid of. So, while super water may work pretty well for most food colouring stains, you may need to use toothpaste, vinegar, baking soda, or something else to get rid of more severe stains.

Don’t despair if you get a little food colouring on your skin. It happens from time to time, and there are some simple methods to get rid of it, even using items you have around your house as stain removers.

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I'm Pauline, a mother of four grown children, my passion for cooking stemmed from the joy i get cooking for my family. I love to try new dishes, especially when dining out but creating and sharing my own recipes is my favourite thing to do!

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