marigold extract

Botanical

Marigold extract is lutein's usual vehicle and a quiet natural colorant — eye-health marketing on top, honest yellow underneath.

Also appears on labels as: marigold · dried marigold flowers · marigold meal · tagetes erecta extract

What it is

Extract of Tagetes erecta flowers, standardized for lutein and related carotenoids. In animal feed it has a long, mundane history as a pigment (it's what colors egg yolks deeper yellow); in pet marketing it wears the "eye health" story lutein carries in human supplements.

Why it's in pet food

Both jobs at once: a natural yellow-orange hue and an antioxidant line for the back of the bag. Lutein's ocular evidence in dogs and cats is thin and dose-distant from recipe inclusions — the pigment job is the reliable one.

How Bowlmark scores it

Scores are deterministic math over the printed label — the rules below apply to every product identically, and nothing estimates or fills in a blank.

Neutral: no bonus, no deduction, no flag. Worth reading against the synthetic-dye pages: marigold is what "colored, but naturally" looks like on a label, and the engine's dye deductions target the synthetic list specifically — a recipe colored with marigold carries none of them.

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Foods that list marigold extract

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Sources

Cite this page

Bowlmark. "Marigold extract in pet food — what it is and how it scores." https://www.bowlmark.com/ingredient/marigold-extract

Engine: Methodology engine v1.1.0 · config 13c99e2f
Verified: Last verified August 12, 2026

No stored score to stamp yet — the engine and config above are the ones a scan runs today.

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