While many of us like to believe that we are not easily deceived, our sense of taste is often fooled by our sense of sight. This is because humans have certain expectations of how food should look. When a food's color is off or is different than what we expect, our brain tells us that it tastes different too. Long supported by scientific studies, we use visual cues from color to identify and judge the quality and taste of what we eat.
Eat With Your Eyes
Your taste buds play an important role in determining the four basic groups of taste, which are sweet, salty, sour, and bitter. When your taste buds come in contact with food, they send signals to your brain to interpret flavor. Because we look at our food before eating, however, our eyes send signals to our brain well before our taste buds get the chance. This can predetermine how we will perceive the taste and flavor of what we're about to eat.
Color is often the first element noticed in the appearance of a food product. Humans begin to associate certain colors with various types of foods from birth, and equate these colors to certain tastes and flavors throughout life. For example, we may expect yellow pudding to have a banana or lemon flavor and red jelly beans to have a cherry or cinnamon flavor. In fresh foods, such as fruits and vegetables, we rely on the color to determine their level of ripeness and/or freshness. If the color of a food product does not match our expectations, we may perceive its taste and flavor differently - a psychological effect some food companies use to their advantage.
- See more at: http://sensing.konicaminolta.us/2013/01/how-color-affects-your-perception-of-food/#sthash.Y13Uy6rE.dpuf