Blue M&Ms

Several years ago, the makers of M&Ms - an American candy that contains an assortment of different colored chocolate sweets -added a new color to its candy bag: Blue. Blue ? Why Blue? Although they reported that this was the result of a vote by M&M's fans it raises a few questions. It may very well be the last color left in the bag after the novelty wears off.

Blue Color Facts

Of all the colors in the spectrum, blue is an appetite suppressant. Weight loss plans suggest putting your food on a blue plate. Or even better than that, put a blue light in your refrigerator and watch your munchies disappear. Or here's another tip: Dye your food blue! A little black will make it a double whammy.

Here's an example:

Here's another example:

This is a delicacy prepared for the annual food party held at the end of the author's color course at the University of Hawaii. It's a "musubi"  - rice in a seaweed (nori) wrapper. It's of Japanese origin and is very popular in Hawaii in it's natural state. In case you're wondering what the pink stuff is, it's spam. If you want to create your own dyed food, use only natural "food coloring" purchased in a grocery store. Other coloring agents are toxic.

Dramatic results can also be achieved by using a blue light bulb for your dining area.

Why is blue an unappetizing color?

Blue food is a rare occurrence in nature. There are no leafy blue vegetables (blue lettuce?), no blue meats (blueburger, well-done please), and aside from blueberries and a few blue-purple potatoes from remote spots on the globe, blue just doesn't exist in any significant quantity as a natural food color.

Consequently, we don't have an automatic appetite response to blue. Furthermore, our primal nature avoids food that are poisonous. A million years ago, when our earliest ancestors were foraging for food, blue, purple and black were "color warning signs" of potentially lethal food.

A food professional has this to say:

Color and the appeal of various foods is also closely related. Just the sight of food fires neurons in the hypothalamus. Subjects presented food to eat in the dark reported a critically missing element for enjoying any cuisine: the appearance of food. For the sighted, the eyes are the first place that must be convinced before a food is even tried. This means that some food products fail in the marketplace not because of bad taste, texture, or smell but because the consumer never got that far. Colors are significant and almost universally it is difficult to get a consumer to try a blue-colored food -- though more are being marketed for children these days. Greens, browns, reds, and several other colors are more generally acceptable, though they can vary by culture. The Japanese are renowned for their elaborate use of food colorings, some that would have difficulty getting approval by the Food and Drug Administration in the United States.
Gary Blumenthal International Food Strategies

Toss some cooked spaghetti noodles with diluted blue food coloring or cook the noodles in blue colored boiling water. (Note: Use only "food coloring" purchased in a grocery stores for these recipes. Other coloring agents are toxic.) Imagine what you can do to the sauce. Don't forget to add a few blue M&Ms for garnish.

Most people say that pink is a sweet color. But what happens when you paint all the wall of a room pink? Can a pink jail calm a violent prisoner? Does pink make strong men weak? Get the answers at Drunk Tank Pink

Does pink make strong men weak?
Can pink jail cells calm violent prisoners?

Can pink weaken you? Do pink jail cells create a calming effect? Is it true that football locker rooms (the ones for the visiting/opposing teams) are painted a certain shade of pink to weaken the players?

Yes and no! Here are the facts and some opinions:

Research - Baker Miller Pink

Courtesy of Color Voodoo Publications  © All rights reserved

One of the most interesting examples of color effects is Baker-Miller Pink - R:255, G:145, B:175. Also known as "Drunk tank pink," this color has been used to calm violent prisoners in jails.

Dr. Alexander Schauss, Ph.D., director of the American Institute for Biosocial Research in Tacoma Washington, was the first to report the suppression of angry, antagonistic, and anxiety ridden behavior among prisoners: "Even if a person tries to be angry or aggressive in the presence of pink, he can't. The heart muscles can’t race fast enough. It’s a tranquilizing color that saps your energy. Even the color-blind are tranquilized by pink rooms." (1) In spite of these powerful effects, there is substantial evidence that these reactions are short term. Once the body returns to a state of equilibrium, a prisoner may regress to an even more agitated state.
1. Morton Walker, The Power of Color, (New York, Avery Publishing Group, 1991), pp. 50-52

But there's more ...

1. Subsequent studies examining the influence of the colour Baker-Miller pink on behaviour have yielded conflicting results. Link

2. There's no proof that the reactions lasted longer than 15-30 minutes.

3. A color guru (who conducted the first research on the effects of this pink) posted the following to the Color Matters Bulletin Board:

Color selections made for the holding cells were originally done in the late 1970's and early 1980's. You might have seen a guy on "That's Incredible" in the 1980's, holding up big sheets of Blue and then Pink poster board, while someone saw how much weight their outstretched arms could bear. That was more of the same stuff. There are a few catches though.

• They botched the color a bit and made it a kinda hot greyish pink. Psst: Alex...you didn't get the color right!
  
  
• They didn't take into account exposure effects. The color was 'in the ballpark' enough to give scientifically significant results (blind study). But..
  
  
• Prisoners did respond and calmed down, as hoped, initially. Major goof: If they hung around too long, they became even more violent. Why? The reasons are so very very clear.
  
  
• Other reasons: "I suspect there are, what one might call, innate responses to certain stimuli - in this instance a color or stimulus that prompts aggressiveness. But observations suggest that people can develop linkages of given stimuli to specific behaviors - and that these linkages will very quickly override many of the secondary or more subtle innate responses."

An example? There are many. Here's a traumatic one:
A mother watches a bright red car zoom by. A second later her child is on the ground, critically hurt, hit by the car. The child survives, but the trauma is so instant, so deep, the woman's association of bright-red to horrible loss is forever buried in her psyche. A linkage has been formed. Ever since then, when she sees that bright red, her heart races and an intense fear moves through her. She rejects that color and keeps it away... Does bright-red = horrid loss then? To her it does. It's a uniquely formed, special case linkage. But to you, or me that same bright-red might mean something good, a warm Valentine's moment, a spouse's beautiful lips, whatever. The situationally induced linkage of that bright-red to that traumatic fearful moment overrides whatever response to the color might otherwise prevail. So, when you ask: "..what colors are a trigger for aggressive behavior" an answer may be at hand, but it may come with a myriad of caveats that overwhelm an otherwise simple answer. Mac

Color Psychology Experts

Is it true that football locker rooms (the ones for the visiting/opposing teams) are painted a certain shade of pink to weaken the players?

The status of pink football locker rooms today

University of Hawaii associate head coach George Lumkin was a member of the 1991 staff that saw visitor locker rooms at Iowa and Colorado State painted pink in the belief that the color made players passive. Now the WAC has a rule that a visiting team's locker room can not be painted a different color than the home team's. In other words, it can be pink, black or any color of the rainbow, as long as both locker rooms are the same color.

Source: Honolulu Star Bulletin 10/24/99

You might also be interested in:

Why is pink associated with girls?
Find the answers at The Meanings of  Pink

Onliine learning from the author of Color Matters

Explore more online courses!

This question pertains to the condition known as synaesthesia. This condition describes how our senses work together. For example - with respect to sight, taste and smell - seeing a color may evoke any number of other sensations. Green may be evocative of the smell of grass, lemon yellow may evoke a sour taste.

This is best understood by the fact that each sense has a pathway to the brain. These paths are parallel to each other.

 

However, in some situations, a cross over from one pathway to the other occurs. Seeing the color yellow-green may evoke taste sensations of sourness; pink may evoke sweetness. Seeing the color grey may evoke olefactory (smell) sensations of smokiness.
 

 

We all have some degree of synaesthesia. However, a person with a strong sense of synaesthesia senses stimuli different from a "normal" person. For example, to the person with synaesthesia, a color might have a "taste", a sound might be "felt", and a food might be "heard".

Here are some web sites that will provide much more information :

Blue Beef and Violins
The taste of beef, such as a steak, produces a rich blue. When she hears violins, she also feels them on her face.

Synaesthesia - Doctor Hugo || Museums of the Mind ||
New media org. for art & mind research
Belgian Synaesthesia Association [BSA]

Synesthesia in Art and Science
MIT

Synaesthesia ( Links and references)
Letters + colours
Sounds + synesthesia

Color and Odors

Online learning from the author of Color Matters