Food colorants are inalienable part of human life. Since ancient times, they have become firmly established and have undergone a number of changes. During this time, the attitude towards them has changed. The desire to color the food now raises questions about the various side effects of their use. With the development of methods of toxicology and obtaining data on the toxicity of food coloring, restrictions and standards for their content in food have emerged. The development of methods for the analysis of dyes in various food products is becoming increasingly in demand. Development of screening immunoanalytical methods such as enzyme-linked immunoassay and immunochromatographic one suitable for simultaneous analysis of a large number of samples at the same time allows to avoid serious costs when operating the chromatographic equipment. Reduction of the analysis time and simple sample preparation is what unites immunoassay techniques. This review shows the possibilities of modern immunoanalytical methods for analyzing samples and determining food dyes belonging to different classes.

To rapidly quantify total immunoglobulin E levels in human serum, we developed a novel quantum-dot-based immunochromatographic assay that employs digital recording of fluorescence. It can detect IgE levels of 5–1000 kU/L, with a coefficient of variation ranging from 2.0 to 9.5%. The assay can be processed in 10 min. The developed assay was tested on 95 serum samples. The correlation coefficient between the IgE values obtained by the proposed assay and those obtained by a commercial ELISA kit was 0.9884. Our assay thus shows promise as a new diagnostic tool for IgE detection.