E105 - Fast Yellow AB
What it is and how it is used
Fast Yellow AB is a synthetic azo dye — a yellow of the same broad chemical family as tartrazine and sunset yellow. It was used as a food colour in the mid-twentieth century, before the toxicological testing standards now applied to colours existed.
It has long since fallen out of the European system. It is not among the roughly forty colours on the Great Britain authorised list, and it has no current food use here.
Foods commonly containing it
None in Great Britain. If you have encountered this number it is most likely in a historic reference, an old formulation record, or a database that carries obsolete codes forward.
Safety summary
Fast Yellow AB (E 105) does not appear in the FSA Register of Food Additive Authorisations, the official list of additives authorised for the market in Great Britain, and it is not on the DHSC/FSA list of approved additives and E numbers. On the current GB list it is not an authorised food additive.
Because it is not authorised, no GB or EFSA acceptable daily intake exists for it, and we are not going to quote a number from an obsolete evaluation as though it were current guidance.
The authorised yellow colours in Great Britain are E 100 curcumin, E 101 riboflavin, E 102 tartrazine, E 104 quinoline yellow, E 110 sunset yellow FCF and the carotenes E 160a. Of those, tartrazine, quinoline yellow and sunset yellow are three of the “Southampton Six” and carry a mandatory label warning about effects on activity and attention in children.