I seem to remember there being a study about this, that used pictures of food and had people explain which was more appetizing, and the natural colors won, hands down with adults, but children tended to think foods altered to look a different color were neat. Thus, I was unsurprised at the ketchup.
For me, it’s just the fact that such bright primary colors are intensely associated in my mind with certain artificial flavors. I remember when I first learned that raspberries weren’t blue. It blew my mind.
It’s not just the funky colors of ketchup that are offputting to me, but even the wrong shade or surface reflectance. Say, for example, I’m forced to eat at Sam’s Club for lunch. They don’t have ketchup packets, let alone Heinz or Hunt’s ketchup packets, just the pump-your-own. The red color is close, but the puddle of ketchup that forms has the wrong surface reflectance. It’s like the ketchup is coated with several layers of clear-coat. That certainly makes it less appealing.
That’s interesting. Now that you say that, I remember a brief obsession with food coloring when I was about six. (I had forgotten it.) I was putting food coloring in eggs, oatmeal, all sorts of things. My mom indulged me. Guess the weird colors didn’t bother me then. Hmm. That does suggest that maybe there is a learned response at work here rather than something instinctive.
devilsknew might be onto something with the Pavlovian idea.
Sorry, I guess I didn’t make it clear. The pigment in the purple onions leached out and turned the entire mixture a purplish-pinkish color that does not resemble food.
I might at that, even if my rational mind knows damned well that it’s actually delicious. Then again, onions at that level of done-ness often resemble nightcrawlers to me, so maybe some color would diminish that effect.
When I was growing up in Saskatchewan during the '50s, colured margarine was illegal, so it came with a little packet of bright orange powder you could mix in. It was a great advance when it started coming in a plastic bag with a little bubble of dye you could pop and mix in by squeezing the bag. Then coloured marg was legalized, but had to be much yellower than butter. I don’t know if that still holds.
pulykamell, those onions look a lot like some pickled beets I’ve seen. Delicious!
Blueberries are a “blue” edible in nature that comes quickly to mind. Marionberries and huckleberries, in some forms, are also blue. All are extremely edible, tasty, and attractive.
In general, though, you are right in saying there are few blue foods occurring naturally or at least that has been my experience, too.
Perhaps purple reminds you of spoiled meat which can quickly acquire a purplish tinge and accompanying horrible odor of decomposition?
For me, it’s a matter of sweet pickle relish vs. savory dill pickle relish. I have never eaten chicago style neon relish so I have no idea if it is sweet or savory, or how it tastes in any way for that matter? But seeing that intense green automatically triggers a sweet ghosting response, so it might make me react adversely if I were to try it and discover it is savory dill pickle relish, expecting one thing, and getting another. Now, of course if I had some right here I could sniff it first before tasting it and determine immediately if it is sweet or savory perhaps realigning and ameliorating my reaction.
I guess that color of neon green in chicago style relish makes me expect the green apple or watermelon flavored suckers/hard candy of my youth. Hence the sweet ghost, however simultaneously, their flavors don’t necessarily clash and share that “green” flavonoid present in cucumber, green apple, and watermelon, collectively… so they are harmonious.
Or actually, after exploring that neural web and its convolutions What I am actually associating that unnatural cuke relish with, is my Aunt Jewel’s Crystallized or Candied Sweet Pickles. I think they were prepared with pickling lime and were unnaturally crisp and sweet. One of my favorite pickles at special meals and gatherings.
(They do the same with watermelon rind, down south. Fresh watermelon wedges eaten to the bone… plenty of seed spittin’ contests, then mama would collect the green rinds after and crystalize them with sugar. Nothing wasted, nothing wonted, Nature’s true candy. Who doesn’t like watermelon?)
I think purple ketchup would be off putting because it is “close” but not ketchup red, as opposed say, to green. Also we have green condiments, but again that shade of purple I would think of as non savory.
In regards to food colouring, I should note that blue is useful because it is not a naturally produced colour in the human body. Blue Dye Tests are used sometimes to determine readiness for tracheostomy weaning. (Not so much anymore and there are some studies that show it to have up to a 40% false positive rate)
The outlawing of dyed yellow margarine seems kind of counterintuitive to me, as genuine butter isn’t really yellow anyways, it is an off white or quite literally cream colored, and in my estimation pretty similar in color to undyed oleo? Did the Dairy industry use to dye their butter? Did cows eat more grass then, dandelions?.. I just have never seen a bright yellow butter? It would seem like an advantage to the dairy industry for its competitor to be some weird unnatural yellow.
I can go you all one better for yuckiness. My boss’s husband is a fantastic cook but the only dish of his that I couldnt bring myself to eat was his black bean soup. The beans and the soup are actually black and the chunks of ham looked like chunks of coal. Just picturing that awful concoction in my mind gives me the shudders!
Well, outlawing dyed margarine doesn’t mean you can’t dye the butter. Butter has some amount of color, but what most people buy has been dyed, and they expect it to be yellower than it naturally is. The Trader Joe’s butter in my fridge says it’s made from “Pasteurized cream, salt, and seasonally, annatto”. Annatto is a type of yellow food coloring. Also, I believe undyed oleo is REALLY dead fishbelly white, which is what the dairy industry wished to stick the oleo manufacturers trying to sell. Since they couldn’t make them dye it pink, and look even more unnatural.
