On the psychological impact of food colour
Open accessAbstract
Colour is the single most important product-intrinsic sensory cue when it comes to setting people’s expectations regarding the likely taste and flavour of food and drink. To date, a large body of laboratory research has demonstrated that changing the hue or intensity/saturation of the colour of food and beverage items can exert a sometimes dramatic impact on the expectations, and hence on the subsequent experiences, of consumers (or participants in the lab). However, should the colour not match the taste, then the result may well be a negatively valenced disconfirmation of expectation. Food colours can have rather different meanings and hence give rise to differing expectations, in different age groups, not to mention in different cultures. Genetic differences, such as in a person’s taster status, can also modulate the psychological impact of food colour on flavour perception. By gaining a better understanding of the sensory and hedonic expectations elicited by food colour in different groups of individuals, researchers are coming to understand more about why it is that what we see modulates the multisensory perception of flavour, as well as our appetitive and avoidance-related food behaviours.
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People systematically associate different colours of foods and beverages with specific basic tastes.
“Agrowing body of scientific research shows that people systematically associate di erent colours of foods and beverages (regardless of whether they are found in the food itself or in the food presentation / packaging), with specific basic tastes”
From The Role of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Sensory Factors in Sweetness Perception of Food and Beverages: A Review (2019) · cites this paper as [50]
The Conclusions (page unavailable) say that extensive evidence documents colours people associate with each basic taste, supporting the central claim. The Taste/flavour intensity section (page unavailable) also discusses expectations from packaging colour, but it does not establish that packaging or presentation colours are associated with specific basic tastes in the same way. (LLM, conf=0.82)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredRed-coloured drinks enhance sweetness detection, expectations of sweetness, and perceived intensity.
“Specifically, in terms of sweetness, red-coloured drinks have been found to enhance sweetness detection [34], expectations of sweetness [53], and perceived intensity [30,33,35,39,50].”
From The Role of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Sensory Factors in Sweetness Perception of Food and Beverages: A Review (2019) · cites this paper as [50]
The Taste/flavour intensity section reports that adults rated dark-red strawberry drinks sweeter than light-red ones, supporting the perceived-intensity part of the claim. It does not establish that red drinks enhance sweetness detection or expectations of sweetness; its discussion of detection thresholds says red colouring lowered the threshold for bitterness, not sweetness. (LLM, conf=0.86)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
Wang, Q. J., Mielby, L. A., Junge, J. Y., Bertelsen, A. S., Kidmose, U., Spence, C., & Byrne, D. V. (2019) · Foods · doi:10.3390/foods8060211 · Cited by 168 · see citing works
“Specifically, in terms of sweetness, red-coloured drinks have been found to enhance sweetness detection [33], expectations of sweetness [52], and perceived intensity [29,32,34,38,49].”
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- Authors
- Spence, C.
- Affiliations
- University of Oxford (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Spence, Charles
- ORCID
- Spence, Charles
- Venue
- Flavour
- Published
- 2015-04-22
- Volume
- 4
- Issue
- 1
- ISSN
- 2044-7248 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2091099182
- Cited by
- 481
- References
- 147
- Citations by year
- 2026: 37 · 2025: 58 · 2024: 77 · 2023: 51 · 2022: 84 · 2021: 37 · 2020: 38 · 2019: 38 · 2018: 27 · 2017: 16 · 2016: 15 · 2015: 2 · 2013: 1
- FWCI
- 26.62
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Flavour (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Arts and Humanities Research Council (AH/L007053/1)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Food Science › Sensory Analysis and Statistical Methods
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Color perception and design
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Multisensory perception and integration
- Keywords
- food color, expectation disconfirmation, hue and saturation, age differences, genetic differences, food behaviour
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Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
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