the color is capable of influencing the acceptance or the rejection of foods although food dyes can be harmful to health, they are widely used by the food industry, this is why, the objective of this study is to describe the consumption of artificial dyes by 273 nutrition undergraduate students of a public university located in the city of Rio de Janeiro. Through a questionnaire semistructured was characterized the socio-demografic profile of the individuals and through a food frequency questionnaire was determinated the consumption of gelatins, filled biscuits, candies, chewing gum, soft drinks, solid soda preparations, industrialized beverages, ready-made spices and instant noodles. The labels of the products were used to identify the present dyes. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee on Research of the UNIRIO (CAAE (0001.0.313.000-10) em 28/10/2010. The population studied was predominantly composed by women (91.60%) between 17 and 23 years old (83.50%) with family income equal to or greater than 4 minimum wages (70.30%) and 17,3% reported some kind of allergy. Candies and chewing gums of various flavors were the products most consumed by the population (90.8%) and also the most frequently consumed (57% of the individuals consumed 3 to 5 times a week). Filled biscuits (83.5%), industrialized beverages (82,4%), soft drinks (81%), gelatins (81%), and instant noodles (70%) were also widely consumed by the studied population. Fourteen different food dyes were ingested through the consumption of these products being caramel IV, urucum, caramel III and carmine were the most frequent dyes found, in 14%, 12%, 10% e 10% of the products, respectively. The artificial dyes tartrazine, sunset yellow, amaranth, titanium dioxide were also found in 8% of the products. The work revealed that the major part of the studied population is a regular consumer of many different food dyes.