Question 1

Why do we use the preterite estuvo mal here instead of the imperfect estaba mal?

Accepted Answer

We use estuvo because the sentence passes judgment on a specific, completed event: the act of adding the ingredients. If you were setting a scene or describing a continuous state in the past, like "the recipe was wrong," you would use the imperfect estaba mal.

Question 2

How could I change this sentence to mean "It was wrong to add NOTHING BUT food coloring and additive"?

Accepted Answer

You can swap out tanto (so much) for puro (pure/nothing but) to say: Estuvo mal añadir puro colorante y aditivo. In Latin America, placing puro right before the noun is a very common way to emphatically say "only" or "nothing but" that thing.

Question 3

Does the singular word tanto apply to both colorante and aditivo?

Accepted Answer

Yes. When a quantifier like tanto (or an adjective like puro) comes before a list of nouns, it usually agrees in gender and number with the first noun, but its meaning carries over to the rest. Since both nouns here are masculine singular, tanto smoothly applies to both.

Question 4

Why isn't there a word for "food" in the Spanish sentence?

Accepted Answer

The noun colorante simply means "dye" or "colorant." When used in the context of cooking or consumption—which is clear here because of the related word aditivo—it naturally translates to "food coloring" without needing any extra words.

Estuvo mal añadir tanto colorante y aditivo.

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