the usage of artificial dye to prepare desserts is allowed in Brazil, although it should be shown in the packages, which is important because some food dyes like tartrazine and sunset yellow are associated to allergies. The objective of this work was to quantify the artificial food dyes tartrazine, sunset yellow and amaranth in Vanilla and strawberry pudding mix powders. There were analyzed the food dyes from 5 vanilla pudding mixes, which 2 were conventional products (C1-C2) and 3 were light, diet or sugar-free products (L1-L3). There were also analyzed 3 strawberry flavoured pudding mixes of conventional products (C3-C5). Three different trademarks were used. The analyzes were carried out in triplicate. The powders (1.3 g) were extracted with methanol ammonia 5%. The methanolic extracts were analyzed by spectrophotometry at 426 nm, 481 nm and 519 nm for tartrazine, sunset yellow and amaranth, respectively. There were used analytical standards of food dyes Sensient Colors Latin America, Lerma, Mexico. In C1-C2 and L1-L3 there were found (in mg. 100 g-1): 17.68; 57.27; 8.18; 8.21 e 30.39 of tartrazine and 13.31; 16.11; 7.35; 6.67 and 23.87 of sunset yellow, respectively. In the products C3-C5, there were detected 36.38; 36.40 and 36.38 of sunset yellow and 31.39; 76.0 and 33.63, of amaranth, respectively. The Brazilian law allows 15 mg. 100 g-1 of food dye in powder mixes to prepare other desserts (with or without gelatine, starch or gelling agents) of tartrazine and 10 mg. 100 g-1 of sunset yellow and amaranth. Therefore, with the exception of Vanilla pudding mix powders in L1 e L2 all of the other products presented a higher level of artificial food dye in their preparation.