This week’s food topic is about an aspect of food that is quite obvious and apparent, while at the same time often unappreciated: the color of food. The food we eat showcases some of the most striking hues nature has to offer, yet its true brilliance and potential is stifled through the ‘advent’ of industrial and mass-produced food, most of which is pale, monochromatic, and ugly. However, focusing on improving the color scheme on your plate can be one of the simplest, yet most rewarding changes to your diet and eating habits. It can also be an excellent way to begin thinking seriously about your food. This post explores the benefits and importance of paying mind to the color of your food.
What’s Fresh? The more colorful your food is—and the more vibrant those colors are—the fresher it tends to be. And the fresher your food is, the more nutritious it is. Of course, this is a no-brainer. But if you go to the store only once a week, your veggies will tend to look rather sorry by the end of the week, precisely because they’re no longer fresh. Emphasizing the color of your food would require more frequent trips to the store, incidentally improving how nutritious your food is.
The spice of life: Thinking about color naturally leads to considering how the different colors on your plate interact, and the impact a variety of colors can have collectively. Though sometimes it can be aesthetically pleasing, more often than not you’ll want more than one color on your plate going on so as to add some interest to your dinner. But just as monochromatic meals are boring, so can some combinations be ugly and repulsive. When preparing a meal, most cooks think too much about what they’re going to cook and not how well they interact together; and if they do, they consider taste first and foremost. While taste is important, choosing colors that complement each other rather than work against each other can make a meal that much more enticing, improving the overall enjoyment of the meal that much more.
What does red taste like? Indeed, the color of our food can dramatically affect how we think the food tastes. Ever try dying foods colors that are far removed from their natural one? Imagine how you would feel drinking blue orange juice or eating green bread. But our mind doesn’t participate in taste only in extreme cases. As people have often reported (http://www.infoplease.com/spot/colors1.html), colors are each associated with different moods, and can trigger them in us upon seeing them. So depending on what atmosphere you’re trying to set for a meal, try using colors to suggest it.
Hey you! But color doesn’t just set the mood—it also grabs out attention. Manipulating the color of a dish is an excellent way to make your meals more exciting and appealing. Doing so can help elevate the status of food from a mere means to an end in itself. Think about which foods most people eat simply because they are the most convenient and will subside their necessary urges to eat the most quickly: fast food. Obviously, color is not what fast food marketers focus on to sell their product, otherwise it wouldn’t be a pale, boring mixture of brown, white, and yellow. The price of fast food is what is most appealing, not the food itself, thereby essentially making eating an act of filling a food, rather than one of beautiful enjoyment. Color can help shift the focus back onto food, to make eating more of a joyous end in itself.
Teach a man to fish: Considering food more as an end in itself is also a great way to innovate, especially where color is concerned. Try cooking based on a certain color combination you have in mind. Or try copying the color scheme of a certain dish but with entirely different foods. Maybe even choose a different color to be the principal theme of your dinner, and change it up each night of the week. This will get you to think about which foods have the particular colors you have in mind, and whether they would complement each other well. This is an excellent exercise you can do to increase your creativity, especially if you’re used to just following recipes without ever thinking about why or how the ingredients in them go well together.
Overall, thinking about the color of your food leads to fuller dining experience. Consider how many different colors you ate over the past couple of days. How could become more connected with your food by changing what colors you eat?
