Does color affect taste?

Conclusion

(summarized)

Does color affect taste?

The purpose of this lab was to find out if color affects how foods taste. In this experiment, I made four jellies that all tasted the same, but added red, pink, yellow, and green food colorings. After I made the jelly, I had 15 participants test my experiment. I told them that the jellies are the ones that I made with different flavor powders. Before they ate the jellies, I asked them what do they think it will taste like, and also after they ate the jellies, I asked them what did it taste like. Then, I recorded the data in the data sheet that I created and compared the data.

As I looked through my data, I saw some interesting facts. First, before the participants tried the jelly, there were many of them who said red will taste like cherry or strawberry, yellow like lemon or orange, green like apple, and pink as strawberry or peach. Secondly, after the participants tried the jelly, they said that red tasted like strawberry or cherry, yellow like lemon, green like grape, and pink like strawberry or peach. The fact that I found most interesting was when participants didn’t know what it tasted like, they saw the color and said the fruit that had the color. For example, if a participant didn’t know what green jelly tasted like, they looked at the color said that it tasted like (green)grape.

I half accept and half reject my hypothesis. The reason why I reject my hypothesis is because there weren’t a lot of participants who said that green tasted like kiwi. There were 9 of them who thought red will taste like cherry, and 3 of them who thought that red actually tasted like cherry. There were 6 of them who thought that yellow will taste like lemon and 9 of them who thought that yellow actually tasted like lemon, and there were 8 of them who thought that pink will taste like strawberry and 5 of them who thought that pink actually tasted like strawberry.

There were many things that could have gone wrong and led to incorrect data during my experiment. First, when I first made the jelly for practice, I used the grape jelly called Maigumi. However, the taste of grape was too strong and I poured too much water in the jelly that it was half jelly and half water. I solved this problem by using the jelly King Kkumteulyi instead and not put a lot of water. Second, when I was melting the jelly with the microwave, the liquid overspilled. So, I needed to make sure to set the microwave in 1 minute 30 seconds and stop it 5 seconds before, which means I only had to microwave for about 1 minute 25 seconds.

Some questions related to this lab that I could investigate are

1. Does color affect the temperature you feel?

2. Does color affect human’s mood?

3. Does color affect memory? and

4. Does color affect concentrations?

Background Information

Data & Results

According to abcNEWS.com, we “eat” what we “see”. The changing of food’s color can actually change the way it taste. Food coloring are not just in junk foods, but also oranges, salmon, pickles, and even strawberries are colored to make foods more appealing to customers. Hauntashoki, who studies the powerful affect color has on human’s taste bud, did an experiment that could test if color affects taste. “We eat with our eyes, before we ever smell.” , she said. Brain thinks of sweetness when it sees red, sourness when it sees yellow, apple when it sees green, and feels gross when it sees dark color. In the experiment that abcNEWs did, Hauntashoki first made lemon-flavored jell-O and added red coloring to one of them, yellow to another, and left the last one colorless. Except for the food coloring, there was no difference. Kids thought that the red jell-O was sweeter and had the cherry or berry flavors. Adults thought that red jell-O tasted like strawberry or cherry. In the next experiment, she made white chocolate pudding with blue dye, one yellow, and one white. Kids thought that blue tasted like blue raspberry ice-cream and yellow tasted like banana or butterscotch. When they told the participants that it all tasted the same, many still didn’t believe. Some nutritions say that if we take color out of the junk food, we will eat less of it. For example, a grey Cheetos.

http://www.colormatters.com/does-color-affect-taste

Some previous testers said that color actually affected taste. Miss Jackson made three bottles of identical lemon lime soda and put several drops of blue, red, and green food coloring and tested 100 students. Majority of them said they liked the blue soda best because they liked the blueberry flavor the best. A person named Imn made a blue and an original cookie and had 10 people taste each colors, but all of them said that the original one tasted better. Another person, CC’s 9 year old daughter, used sugar and dough cookie mix and mixed 7 different colors for 10 classmates to try. She thought that they will all go for the black cookie, thinking that they would think it was chocolate. However, the colors blue, green, and red were the cookies of choice.

http://www.dorncolor.com/dorn-blog/does-color-affect-how-we-taste-things.aspx

We wouldn’t eat a purple scrambled eggs, a blue steak, bright green chicken nuggets, yellow-orange brownies or a blue ketchup.

Many people are accustom to food looking a certain way or are expecting it to look a certain way, so when we try something new and it’s not what we expected, it causes our taste buds to taste food differently, usually in a bad way.

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/mar/12/how-taste-different-colours

The first bite is taken with the eye, and the link between our visual sense and our flavor perception may be stranger than we think. Charles Spence, the Oxford experimental psychologist said that “Half the brain is visual in some sense versus just a few percent for overall taste senses. So in cortical real estate, vision is always going to win.”

Methods #2

[Testing]

1. Have 10~20 participants ready.

2. Record the participant’s name, age, date, and experiment number.

3. Tell that these are different jellies that I made with different flavor powders.

4. Ask 2 questions : “What do you think each of one will taste like?” and “Which one do you think will be the most tastiest?”

5. Record data.

6. Turn on the video, and let them taste all 5 jellies. As they taste each of them one by one, ask “What did it taste like?”. After tasting all, ask “Which was the best?”

7. Record data.

8. Tell them thanks for participating and the answer : The flavors were all the same.

Materials

Methods #1

Hypothesis

& Variables

[Making the jelly]

1. Open the jelly

2. Cut and separate them into colors, and put them equally in 5 paper cups.

3. Get water from the water purifier and pour it in each paper cups until the jellies are under water.

4. Pour 5 tablespoons of peach cool piece and 10 tablespoons of pineapple cool piece.

5. Put the cups one by one in the microwave for about 1 minute 25 seconds. Make sure to take the cup 5 minutes early. Otherwise the liquid will boil and overflow.

6. Make sure there are no jelly anymore in the cup and add 3 teaspoons of sugar

7. Mix 4 different food colorings in each cup : pink, orange, green, and red. Stir them well with disposable spoons.

8. Pour them into 4 different rectangular frames.

9. Put them in the refrigerator and check the time.

10. After 2~3 hours, take them out. Make sure to shake the frame around and see if there is any movements. If is, leave it in the refrigerator about 30 minutes more.

11. Ready to test.

Hypothesis :

If I told the participants that the jellies has different flavors, then they might say that red tastes like cherry, yellow as lemon, green as kiwi and pink as strawberry because the cherry is red, lemon is yellow, kiwi is green, and strawberry is pink. As they taste them, they will notice that the color shows up that way and believe that it tastes like it.

Variables :

Independent - Color of the jellies

Dependent - What people think it will taste like

Control - Taste, shape, spoon, etc

- paper cups - refrigerator

- a plastic cup - water purifier

- sugar - microwave

- rectangular frames/cases - tablespoons

- jelly (Korean jelly King Kkumteulyi)

- teaspoon

- food coloring (pink, yellow, red, green)

- disposable spoons

- cool piece (peach & pineapple)