Our diet is increasingly composed of processed foods, which almost always include one or more additives. To evaluate the tartrazine rate in this weaning infants flours Anagobaka powder by the HPLCmethod. Eleven (11) boxes of "Anagobaka” powderwere selected on the local market as follows, 4 from Adjamé, 4 from Abobo and 3 from Treichville and onebottle of local weaning flour. Another bottle of weaning flour purchased from a shopping center was used as reference flour. The dyes are extracted by the wool tart method and the tartrazine contents were determined by the HPLC method. These results showed that the reference weaning flour and local flour are except for tartrazine. All samples of Anagobaka weaning flours analyzed have tartrazine contents ranging from 408,785 ± 48,638 to 2065,561 ± 237,837 mg.kg-1. These levels do not respect the recommended standard of 300 mg.kg-1. They are higher than the European estimate of the maximum theoretical consumption of tartrazine by a child who is based on a no-adverse-effect level of 390 mg.kg-1 body weight per day. These high levels of tartrazine in these "Anagobaka” weaning flours can induce allergenic, carcinogenic and mutagenic potential in infants and young children who consume them.
