We Eat With Our Eyes
We eat with our eyes – and why colours rock!
Colour is the most important sensory component in setting people’s expectations when it comes to food. We really do eat with our eyes as we decide more about how a food is going to taste by its colour than anything else.
Young children and colour
Babies are naturally drawn to bright colours. They take in the world around them with their eyes and use colours to distinguish shapes and separate objects.
They find primary colours like red, yellow and blue easier to see, which is why most toys and other things aimed at small children are vibrant greens rather than pastel ones.
This of course, is useful to know from a food point of view. If colours are important then, being exposed to lots of brightly coloured fruit and vegetables from an early age helps.
In fact, many children learn about colours by making associations with food. Red for apple, yellow for banana and well, orange!
Repeatedly serving these foods and building positive thoughts is a great way to support better eating.
Colour intensity
Studies have shown that we are naturally drawn to foods that have the brightest or most intense colours, the shiniest apple or the strawberry with the deepest red.
This makes sense as in nature the foods that are brightly coloured are the ones that are ripest, sweetest and provide the most natural energy.
Intense colour also signifies more nutritious phytochemicals!
First impressions count
Studies have shown that the colour of a food can have a huge impact on what we expect it to taste like. It is the reason that certain things are dyed. For example, many oranges have skins that are green. This would not be an “orange” in many consumers’ eyes and so the skins are artificially coloured
Food and drinks have often been coloured for many years (even centuries).
Studies show that how a food tastes and how we interpret the flavour is often decided and not consciously, but automatically, by our expectations of how it is going to taste.
Expectations
Colour is important but our view of how something is going to taste is also based on branding, labelling, packaging and other variables, for example, when and where the food is served.
1. Manufacturers put a lot of focus around building recognition of their products and colour often plays a big role. Products aimed at young children are often brightly coloured and have images that appeal.
Picky eaters can become very fixated on a brand. They know even as toddlers that they like an exact food from a certain pot, which is a specific colour.
Not serving foods in the pot or having the jar on the table, for example, can help reduce this influence.
2. Manufacturers also spend a lot of time making their food sound like something you must feed to a child (even if this is not entirely true).
3. Many foods aimed at children have favourite Disney characters or the latest TV icon on the packaging.
Like branding, this can work against us as a child can become hooked on one specific pot or jar.
It can also work for adults as we can use the same images to make foods more appealing. Having a spiderman sticker on an apple or gluing a Frozen picture on the outside of a mini pottle with raisins in, can make that food more appealing.
4. Food is often eaten because of how, when or with whom it is served.
There are many fussy children who eat better at creche or Kindy. There are others who will eat something with nanna but not with mum or dad.
Sometimes a child is willing to eat new foods with friends that they would not tackle at home.
If we do have a child that eats better somewhere else, it is a great sign. Frustrating, but good! It means that they are able to do more than they show us.
A good way to approach this is to think carefully about what is happening where they eat well that supports them to eat more widely. Is it because nanna always bakes with them? Is it because the Kindy teacher sits with a child when they are having their snack?
Studies have also shown that how food is served can make a big difference to the way we perceive it. For example, if we served a blue drink in a plastic cup it could well make us think “mouthwash”.
Whereas if we served the same blue drink in a cocktail glass, we would think “sweet”.
We can use this to our advantage as well. How can we serve a food in a way that creates a positive association? Can we, for example, put food into an ice cream cone or a fancy bowl?
Knowing how things influence a child can really help in supporting them to eat more confidently