Like many others settling in for a Friday night movie with a side of snacks, I opted for Doritos chips. My perception of Doritos has always been associated with quality, but after reading the long list of ingredients for one particular flavor (Bold Barbeque), I completely lost my appetite. The flavor, which I expected to be a premium product, was instead loaded with foreign ingredients that seemed out of place. Among them, I identified at least two food coloring agents, but a third one caught me off guard – Indigotine. Intrigued by the word itself, I knew instinctually that it had something to do with color indigo, so I did some more research.

My initial hunch connecting it to the color indigo turned out to be accurate; indigotine (shown be ...