Think about the color of the food you eat on a daily basis. There’s probably a lot of leafy green, some nice fruity reds and oranges, cereal browns and dairy whites. But how about blue? Okay, maybe blueberries qualify, or if you have an exuberant potato vendor at your farmers market you may be getting some blue-ish potatoes–but in general blue isn’t the darling child in nature’s scheme of food hues. Consequently, we haven’t evolved an automatic appetite response to blue–in fact, our primal instinct seems to tell us to step away from the blue food.
According to color professor J.L. Morton, when our earliest ancestors were foraging for food, blue, purple and black were “color warning signs” of potentially lethal food. Food researchers agree–when humans searched for food, they learned to avoid toxic or spoiled objects, which were often blue, black, or purple (berries, eggplant, etc, aside). When food dyed blue is served to study subjects, they lose their appetite. Personally, I’ve always found blue food too creepy, but I always assumed it was because of the dye–I guess there’s more to it.