When it comes to food, color is money. Food companies know that better color gives better prices, so they ensure that their products are attractive in color to bolster earnings. Oranges, for example, have to meet specific color standards. And oranges are just the beginning. There are color standards for foods including French fries, tomatoes, pumpkins, olives, honey and cherries.
The attention to color is for good reason. For all the talk of the tongue, our eyes really might be the most important part of the eating experience. A great number of our brain functions are dedicated to processing vision, while only a percent or two is given over to taste faculties, and the result is that color actually changes how we taste food.
Scientists have demonstrated many times the importance of color to taste. In a 1980s study, for example, test participants were asked to name the flavor of the beverage they were drinking without being able to see that beverage. Only one in five was able to identify it as orange. But when they were allowed to see what they were drinking which was orange in color, each of them identified the orange flavor. And when a drink that was lime flavor was colored orange, nearly half of respondents identified the flavor of the beverage as orange. None made that mistake when the beverage was green in color. What's happening when someone fails to identify the flavor of a beverage they can't see or that has an abnormal color? Is it that participants can't discern what the flavor is, and so rely on visual cues? Or does color actually change the experience of taste? The key to these questions is the effect of color on expectation. The brain makes predictions using color. These predictions rely on expectations that come from experience. Research shows that we're all born liking sweet things and desire to eat them, but we aren't born knowing what the sweet things we crave look like. So we need to learn this over time. The brain gets information from the environment. And we learn, for example, that fruits go from green and sour to red and ripe and sweet. Thus, if we see a green berry, we equate its color with a sour taste, and just looking at a red fruit will activate our expectations that it will taste sweet and delicious.