According to the latest internet debate, we've been living a lie. If you believe what you read on social media, that colorful candy we've grown to love with explosive bites of lime and grape is in fact the same flavor, despite the different colors.
But is it really? This heated debate was sparked by a recent NPR article about a blind taste test the writer conducted with coworkers to determine if they could tell what color gummy bear they were eating, if they couldn't see it.
The orange ones. The purple ones. According to Brandeis University neuropsychologist Don Katz, our senses play tricks on us when the smell and the appearance of the sweets come into play, which means they can all taste the same without us even realising. He explained that the author of Gastrophysics: The New Science of Eating, Charles Spence, did an experiment which involved giving British students clear beverages in clear bottles.
The students did a really good job of identifying the flavours - until he added the 'wrong' food colourings to each liquid, making the grape flavour orange for example, and the apple flavour purple. The yellow beverage tasted like lemonade. There wasn't a thing they could do about it. He continued, " The Skittles people, being much smarter than most of us, recognised that it is cheaper to make things smell and look different than it is to make them actually taste different.
So if the smell and appearance look like one thing, it can taste entirely different? According to Katz, the candy companies, as one would expect it is their job, after all know all about this phenomenon.
Katz says this works because our brains are used to processing certain sensory cues together. For example, our brains associate the color yellow, a lemon smell and a slightly acidic taste with each other. She got three out of five correct, so maybe some of the rainbow is actually in there.
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