Amaranth shows up in a surprisingly wide range of products, from breakfast cereals and gluten-free flours to skincare creams and even food dyes. The word “amaranth” can refer to three different things depending on context: an ancient grain, a leafy green vegetable, or a synthetic red food coloring. Here’s where you’ll find each one.
Grain-Based Foods
Amaranth grain is a tiny, round seed about the size of a poppy seed, and it turns up in many health-food products. You’ll find it in multigrain cereals, granola bars, and porridge blends, often popped like miniature popcorn. Popping is actually the most common way amaranth is processed for packaged foods, since the puffed grains need no further cooking and add a light, crunchy texture.
Amaranth flour is a staple in gluten-free baking. Because it contains roughly 13 grams of protein per 100 grams of flour, manufacturers blend it into gluten-free bread, pasta, crackers, and snack puffs to boost protein content. A typical gluten-free snack formulation uses around 20% amaranth flour mixed with other flours like brown rice. The result is a product with noticeably more protein than you’d get from rice flour alone. Cooked whole amaranth grain delivers about 4.7 grams of protein per 100-gram serving, and unlike most plant foods, it’s unusually rich in lysine, an essential amino acid that’s hard to find outside of animal products.
You can also buy amaranth as rolled flakes, similar to rolled oats, for making hot cereal or adding to baked goods like muffins and pancakes.
Traditional Dishes Around the World
Amaranth has deep roots in Latin American, Caribbean, South Asian, and African cooking, and it appears in dishes you may not have connected to the plant.
In Mexico, popped amaranth seeds are bound together with honey or sugar syrup to make alegría, a popular candy bar sold by street vendors and in markets. The name literally means “joy.” Amaranth porridge is a common breakfast in parts of Central America and the Andes, where the grain has been cultivated for thousands of years. The species most widely grown for grain, Amaranthus caudatus, originated in South America and remains a dietary staple in Peru and Bolivia.
The leaves of the plant are just as important as the seeds in many cuisines. In India, amaranth greens go by regional names like thotakura in Telugu and dantina soppu in Kannada, and they’re cooked into curries, stir-fries, and dal. In the Caribbean, amaranth leaves are a key ingredient in callaloo, a thick, soupy green dish. Across East Africa and Southeast Asia, the greens are boiled or sautéed much like spinach. The species Amaranthus gangeticus is the one most commonly cultivated and eaten as boiled greens.
Gluten-Free and Health Food Products
If you’ve picked up a gluten-free product and scanned the ingredient list, there’s a good chance you’ve seen amaranth. It serves a dual purpose in these products: it replaces wheat structurally while adding nutritional value that many gluten-free grains lack. Rice-based gluten-free foods, for example, tend to be low in protein and fiber. Adding amaranth flour helps close that gap.
Common gluten-free products that list amaranth as an ingredient include sandwich breads, pizza crusts, tortillas, pasta, crackers, and puffed snack chips. Some protein bars and trail mixes include popped amaranth for crunch. You’ll also see it in “ancient grain” product lines alongside quinoa, millet, and teff.
Skincare and Cosmetics
Amaranth seed oil is a growing ingredient in the beauty industry, and you’ll find it listed on the labels of moisturizing creams, lipsticks, makeup foundations, and hair care products. The reason comes down to one compound: squalene. Amaranth seeds contain 6 to 8% squalene, which is dramatically higher than other plant sources. Olive oil, by comparison, contains only 0.2 to 0.5%.
Squalene is a natural moisturizer that your own skin produces in smaller amounts as you age. It absorbs easily, resists oxidation better than many plant oils, and works as an emollient, meaning it softens and smooths skin. In cosmetic formulations, amaranth oil is typically added at concentrations around 1 to 2% in water-in-oil creams. It’s valued enough that some brands market amaranth oil as a standalone facial oil or serum.
The Synthetic Dye Called Amaranth (E123)
Confusingly, “amaranth” is also the name of a synthetic red-purple food dye, designated E123 in Europe. This chemical has nothing to do with the amaranth plant. It’s named after the color of amaranth flowers, not derived from them.
The dye was once widely used in soft drinks, powdered drink mixes, candies, baked goods, icings, jams, and jellies. That’s no longer the case in most of the world. The United States banned amaranth dye in all foods and beverages. Russia and Japan also prohibit it. The European Union still permits it, but only under strict conditions and in a narrow list of products: caviar, fish roe, certain spirits, aromatised wines, and some low-alcohol mixed drinks. Many European food companies avoid it voluntarily.
If you’re reading an ingredient label and see “amaranth” listed in a food product sold in the EU, check whether it’s referring to the grain or the dye. In the U.S., any amaranth on a label refers to the plant, since the dye is illegal there.
Amaranth in Supplements and Specialty Oils
Because of its high squalene content, amaranth seed oil is sold as a dietary supplement in capsule form, marketed for cardiovascular and skin health. You’ll also find amaranth protein powder, typically made from defatted amaranth flour, in health food stores alongside other plant-based protein supplements. Its lysine content makes it a useful complement to other grain-based proteins, which tend to be low in that particular amino acid.
Whole amaranth grain is sometimes included in seed mixes for sprouting. Sprouted amaranth is used in raw food recipes and added to salads, smoothies, and dehydrated crackers. The plant is versatile enough that nearly every part of it, seeds, leaves, and oil, ends up in some commercial product.