Field Blog Entry #9 - Visual Perception (Personal)

Are blue foods as cool as the color implies? 

I came upon this article a few days ago while researching about colors and visual perception. Curry is a famous food that people enjoy. Its colors tend to vary but it stays close to the shades of red and yellow. Blue curry is uncommon and unfamiliar to many people. One restaurant in Japan came up with the idea of blue curry and people were seen to reject automatically. The restaurant assures that the blue color is caused by food coloring and the ingredients are the same. But people become “doused” by the “blindingly blue liquid”. People naturally look for the correspondence between the food and their experiences of color. They feel uncomfortable and foreign towards the curry because the food and the color does not correspond.

Blue-colored food is actually used in many places or restaurants around the world to reduce hunger. It has been proved that people tend to order food with blue coloring because it helps them with their diet. They lose their appetite because of the unfamiliarity of the color of the food and thus be successful in reducing weight. 

During our Theory of Knowledge class, we defined visual perception as the “perceptual process that is not structured to record data but to organize meaning”. Because of cognitive processing people tend to interpret what they visually see. People expect certain colors or characteristics when they see something so their “mind blanks out” when it doesn’t fit their expectations. Sense perception is one of the ways of knowledge but people “tend to look for meaning in what we see and group the perceptual experiences”. This is known as visual grouping as stated by Van de Lagemaat.

http://en.rocketnews24.com/2012/11/15/bright-blue-curry-and-intense-disgusting-juice-on-the-menu-at-niconico-cafe-not-for-the-faint-of-stomach/

http://en.rocketnews24.com/2013/07/19/are-blue-foods-as-cool-as-the-color-implies-we-try-blue-curry-ramen-and-beer/