The colour of bowls and plates can influence how food tastes to picky eaters

Picky eaters can be extremely sensitive to the sensory characteristics of food: small differences in the smell, texture, or look of a certain food can lead to them rejecting it. But what about the plates that meals are served up on?

A new study, published in Food Quality and Preference, looks at whether or not the colour of a bowl impacts the way we experience taste. Madison Annette and Lorenzo D. Stafford from the University of Portsmouth find that different colours do change the way we perceive food: but only if we're already picky eaters.

The researchers recruited 47 university students, who first took part in a test to measure their pickiness, responding to statements such as "I am very particular about the foods I eat".  Participants then sampled portions of a bag of salt and vinegar crisps, equally split between three different coloured bowls: red, white, and blue. After each bowl, they rated the saltiness, flavour intensity, and desirability of the snack, before rinsing their mouth with water and moving to the next bowl.

The colour of the bowl had an effect on picky eaters' perceptions: they rated the crisps as saltier in blue and red bowls than in the white bowl. However, non-picky eaters showed no differences in their ratings. Picky eaters also rated the crisps as more desirable when taken from the blue bowl as opposed to the red or white bowl; again, this effect was not present in non-picky eaters. There were no effects of bowl colour on perceived intensity of the flavour.

The findings replicate results from other studies, which have similarly found that saltiness is enhanced by blue cutlery and crockery. This may be because of the association of salt with blue packets in the UK: salt and vinegar snacks are frequently sold in blue packets. As for the lower desirability of the crisps in the red bowl, the team suggests that the colour red tends to be associated with sweet and fruity flavours; the mismatch between this expectation and the saltiness of the crisps may have resulted in lower perceived desirability. Red can also indicate danger, another possible explanation for the results.

The results suggest that the colour of plates or crockery could influence picky eaters' willingness to eat a wider range of foods. For instance, if someone dislikes food because they find it bland, could eating it from a blue plate make it saltier and thus tastier?

Still, further work is needed before these findings can be used in practice. It's unclear, for instance, whether picky eaters find food they already dislike more palatable when eaten from a particular coloured bowl. Researchers also need to develop a better understanding of what colours induce what kinds of food perceptions. Could the colour of a plate also increase perceptions of sweetness, for example? This kind of work could lead to better strategies to help picky eaters expand their repertoire.