The Rarity of Blue

Blue is a rare color in nature, and because it is, many creatures use blue to attract their mates. Many species of Bowerbirds heavily decorate their bowers in blue even if it means needing a little help from mankind. Bowerbirds use blue to show their potential mates their ability to scrounge for resources. It proves physical fitness if a male bowerbird can get blue objects, and keep other bowerbirds from stealing them.

Thank you for answering one of my most puzzling questions: Why is there no blue food?

Many years ago when I was a kid and making dinner for the family that night, I put blue food coloring in the croutons in the salad. It had every other color in it - why not blue? Everybody commented about it and were picking the little blue squares out of their salad before they ate it.

Years later when I was discussing blue food with a friend, also an engineer, he went home and baked a blue chees cake and brought it to me. I cut a slice and ate a few bites, then put the rest of it in the refrigerator with the cake. Four months later I threw the whole mess out.

There is no blue food because we won’t eat it.

Now drinking is another issue altogether.

Link to column:

Alfred Hitchcock once served all-blue food at a dinner party and noted that people really struggled to eat it.

We’ve also discussed this a couple of times on SDMB:

Oops. Sorry about that. I usually try to remember to add the link to my posts.

I’m sure somebody will correct me on this, but isn’t the opposite of purple yellow, and the opposite of blue, orange?

I think Cecil’s color wheel got shifted a notch… or is this one of those additive / subtractive things? :confused:

You’re thinking of the complementary color wheel traditionally used by artists. The reasoning here was that opponent color processing (red/green and blue/yellow are the opponent color pairs) provided a physiological explanation for the prevalence of red/reddish edible plants in a green world. As Cecil concedes, however, this is conjecture.

MARY. I guess blue food is a turn off.
Vanities, Jack Heifner

That picture of the Decaisnea fargesii fruit is startling. It looks unreal but you can find other online images that verify it really is that color.

On the old Britcom Chef!,starring Lenny Henry, they remark that bandaids for food handlers are bright blue, to identify if they’ve fallen into the food. I’ve often seen the bright blue bandaid on cooks on TV. So, we’re pretty fortunate, that there’s no blue food.

Its typical, for one of George Carlin’s rants to take on a life of its own but, for me, ever since I read or heard the joke, I always think, “Ha, Ha, George, but … no, I don’t want any blue food” I’ll eat blue fruits I might pick myself, but not a blue casserole.

It says it produces pods full of a clear goop with little black beans embedded in it. Any idea what it tastes like?

“Clear goop”.
Now THAT sounds yummy.

…blue steak, (presumably from blue cows)…

No, I’ve never seen one other than in online pictures. But here’s a picture of the beans and here’s a picture of the goop.

Served blue rare?

I noticed a factual error in the column: the inside of a blueberry is white, not purple.

…aye. Under a good light it does actually look blue…

Jeff, you’re thinking of cranberries.

Cecil, the color ranges from a purple red through purple to a dark blue. However, I think your explanation is incomplete. The earliest pigments that detected colored light in animals, detected the lower energy frequencies, i.e. red. The higher frequency pigments evolved later. In plants, more pigments arose covering the lower end of the spectrum than the higher. So, the best way to attract animals towards your fruit is towards the red end of the spectrum. This looks like a simple evolutionary bias towards “easiest first.” The test(s) would be a planet with life whose atmosphere had a different optic window. Finally, while not universal. the dearth of pigments that can harvest “green” light continues to be a bit of a puzzle, though it is probably just an artifact of the evolutionary process.

No, I’m not. If you cut a raw blueberry in half you will see that the interior is white, or pretty close to it. Here is a photo I found of a blueberry cut in half.

Blueberries and cranberries are pretty closely related, by the way. They are both in the genus vaccinium.

Jeff:

As your link shows the interior of a blueberry is green(ish), bilberries and huckleberries are purple (Cecil), cranberries are white(ish).

If you’ve ever made whole cranberry sauce and blueberry cobbler for the holidays in North America, you would see the difference.

As there are several hundred species in Vaccinium, many with edible berries, there is a lot of confusion, compounded by location and marketing.