(Note to mods: Yeah, it looks like a food discussion but really it’s a science question. Read on…)
A friend recently made a reference on facebook to the Heinz company’s unfortunate experiment with multiple hues of ketchup. The colored ketchups came out in 2000, and were off the shelf by 2006.
Available colors included included green, pink, orange, teal, and blue, but particularly memorable was the purple ketchup.
I think I am not alone in finding purple ketchup not merely unappetizing, but actually revolting. As in sickening. As in, I get a little nauseated even thinking about eating it.
But why? Why would the thought of purple ketchup be revolting? After all, it’s perfectly edible. It’s ketchup! And besides, I eat other purple foods (eggplant, purple onions, occasional purplish potatoes, and purplish looking “blue” corn).
So why the revulsion at purple ketchup? Is it just some neurosis entirely personal to me? Or is there some scientific explanation as to why food in unexpected colors sets off gastrointestinal alarms?
Kamaboko (fish mash) and Jello (dissolved cow hide) fairly conclusively prove that food need look nothing like its original to be ingested. If you grew up being served purple ketchup, without anyone ever telling you that ketchup came in any other color nor you ever seeing ketchup of any other color, you wouldn’t think a thing of it.
That may be so, but it doesn’t quite get to the question I am trying to answer: why would food in an unexpected color cause revulsion? Is there an evolved response at work here?
(For the record, you’re not talking to a fellow with a weak stomach. I am the guy who laughed in the face of death and made a stew from 20-year-old-vegetables!)
Maybe there’s an unconscious trigger or psychological effect regarding spoilage. For example, I would never eat green bread. Purple sounds very much like rotten tomatoes. Blue or green, I think, wouldn’t trigger my spoilage reflex.
It’s because people are used to seeing red ketchup. It triggers something in them that ketchup is not supposed to look that way. It’s purple food coloring on ketchup, but people must see the red. They are accustomed to it.
Blue wouldn’t? I can’t think of any colour more likely to evoke images of food spoilage than blue. What’s blue and edible in nature?
In case you can’t tell, blue is the only food colour I won’t eat. I don’t find the thought of purple particularly revolting. Green is bad for some things (eggs and ham come to mind…), fine for others.
I call my second daughter a “red-ivore”. If it’s red, she’ll eat it. That’s mostly fruit (apples, watermelons, cherries, strawberries) but also tomatoes, capsicums, carrots (close enough) and cocktail frankfurts. I do wonder if there is some evolutionary psychology at work there because a lot of foods do use red as a signal “I’m ready to eat”
Most of those are purple on the inside. In fact, the blueish dust on the outside of some plums is actually a form of mould - and I would wash it off, personally.
I googled images of the blue corn. Man, that stuff is surreal. I wouldn’t be able to eat it. Maybe if I’d grown up with it. But I don’t eat blue cheese either. It’s blue! Also, mouldy…
I think it might be the particular colour they’ve used, which kinda looks like grime if anything.
As others have pointed out, there are plenty of purple foods, and I haven’t heard of anyone being revulsed by foods of that colour before.
I’ve read of experiments showing an instinctive aversion to foods considered dirty. But I’m not sure if these instincts would be triggered by food being an unfamiliar colour.
It may be that the problem is not with any particular color per se, but rather the use of an unfamiliar color for something we’re used to seeing that suggests that it’s spoiled. I.e., the revulsion isn’t “it’s turned purple” but rather just “it’s turned.”
I remember when Burger King was using the colored ketchups in their kids meals. Our local establishment would give them out to anyone, and I can remember getting the purple and green ones several times. The green one just looked wrong and did taste slightly different. The purple one tasted about the same, but it was odd not seeing red ketchup. I was glad when they stopped that experiment.
My husband loves ketchup, so I bought him some of the green when it came out as a gag. (Myself, I don’t use much ketchup at all.) It was a disaster.
It tasted absolutely fine. But it’s appearance on the plate was gross. Not when you first squirted it out, but after - when you’d smeared it about on the plate, getting up bits with a french fry. In this state, it went from it’s bright hunter green to something, well, much more mold colored. The Mister couldn’t finish it - he went and got some BBQ sauce or something for the remainder of his dinner. We ended up throwing the rest of the bottle away.
Food appearance counts more than we give it credit for, it seems.
My friends used to buy this stuff for their kids back when it was available. The blue and teal were the worst … looked like the kids were dipping their fries in tempera paint.
The green ketchup almost worked, though. Could’ve been a faux “ketchup verde” has it been more of a dill-pickle color, rather than bright Kelly green.
There’s some hot dog relish out there that’s dyed electric Kelly green – I ate it at a small hot-dog-specializing diner in the Chicago suburbs circa 2000. That relish’s color makes it rather unappealing.
Also, condiments generate probably more overall brand loyalty than any other food. There are lots of things that people are willing to buy other brands of or generics depending on convenience and price. Not so with condiments.
For me, my ketchup must be Heinz. My mayonnaise must be Hellmans. Anything else is just wrong.
Making something a weird color will make almost any food less appetizing, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the effect was particularly strong with a condiment.
And ketchup is frequently used by kids, who tend to be suspicious of anything new and strange, so I imagine that had a disproportionate impact as well.
My revulsion to the purple ketchup, probably stems from the fact that I associate purple paste with something sweet like grape jelly, and so tasting a ketchup flavor with that would be so unexpected as to turn my stomach. For example suppose you took a bite of what you thought was strawberry mousse but which suddenly turned out to be smoked salmon mousse.
I was going to say that just about every single mass-market food item has a bit of some sort of coloring in it so that the food looks the right color, but a quick look over stuff in the fridge makes it only partly true. Here’s some colorings I found:
I can’t believe it’s not Butter spray - Beta Carotene for color.
A1 steak sauce, both regular and thick and hearty - Caramel color
Vlasic sweet relish - blue and yellow food coloring
Vlasic Bread and Butter Chips - yellow food coloring
Marzetti’s Raspberry Vinaigrette - Red food coloring
This is what I was going to say. If I see something purple in a squeeze bottle, I have a hard time not thinking of it as grape jelly, and the idea of putting mustard and grape jelly on a burger is not particularly appealing.
Colors, shapes, and foods go together the way we are brought up to expect them, in addition to how well they taste.
I think the majority would expect to dip french frys in ketchup but would not put catsup on potatoes. And similarly butter on a baked potato but not dipping frys in butter.
I used to like mayonnaise sandwiches, and wouldn’t reject one but prefer something else. I also like dipping pizza in ranch dressing. Those color (and taste) combinations might be revolting to people who hadn’t experienced them.
