Blue raspberries?

[ChiefScott]

Raspberries are red.

Why is every raspberry flavored drink, candy and gum colored blue?

[funneefarmer]

Because they allready use the artificial red for strawberry, fruit punch, bubblegum and watermelon. Blue is used in blueberry and not much else. Certainly all these products use artificial colors so the color of the product is a matter of choice for the manufacturer. Red can be mistaken for a variety of other more popular flavors. Why they chose blue, other than the fact that it is underutilised, is a mystery to me as well.

-This post is approved by the Association for WAG.

[pulykamell]

Not exactly an answer to your question, but raspberries are not necessaryily red. They also come in purple and black, and sometimes a kind of yellowish-orange.

But no blue as far as I know.

[Rhythmdvl]

It is actually a translation mistake. The Department of Standards and Practices (In Cambridge, I think) maintains many of the world's standards of measurement. (You may remember a few months ago they sold off / retired one of the platinum meter sticks?) One area is devoted to foodstuffs. They have, among other things, the official 'cherry' flavor standard. They also have the official (official to the English, anyway. But the Ministry's opinions do carry some weight) Pantone reference colors for foodstuffs. This is why food flavors / color combinations are almost universal. Pale pink for watermelon, deep blue for grape, chalky white for pineapple, etc.. There are exceptions, of course, because no one really the English to get upset.

I believe it was at the Paris World's Fair that one of the rules vendors had to follow was adherence to the standards. This was back when artificial colors / flavors were new, so there was a bit of consternation in France about degrading the memory of real fruit. Or some crap like that. Leave it to the French. Also leave it to the French to insist that everything be in French. This meant translating hoards of documents, formulas, etc. from the DSP, which invariably meant that mistakes would find their way into the mix. So, because of the transposition of a couple of numbers or the reversal of a few key grammatical terms, the color for raspberry came out blue rather than red. I'll see if I can find some references when I get home. Hope this helps!



Just doing my part.

Rhythmdvl

[Fear Itself]

This site has everything you want to know about raspberries of all colors.

[ChiefScott]

... their fruits, ranging from black through purple and red to yellow, ...

No mention of blue. Especially the electric blue most of the drinks are.

[samclem]

I got this far tonight...

You'll have to be satisfied with a cache of the orignal as the page must have expired.

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache...+dessert&hl=en

It says, for anyone who doesn't want to read the link, that it originated in a frozen dessert, moved into candy, and now exists in drinks. But no mention of the origin.

FWIW, my kids fight tooth and nail to get the blue raspberry flavored popsicles first.