Why is there no blue food?

Question

Given that the Blueberry is actually dark Purple, and that there may actually be several edible Blue Plants and Flowers, my question is not "what blue food is there?" but WHY is there no obvious blue food?

Answer 1

blue corn and blue potaoes.

Answer 2

Because of where the food comes from.

Plants usually are not blue, except on the flowers themselves, which humans rarely eat. Plants tend to be green to maximise the production of energy in their cells (photosynthesis). Blue light can be absorbed, but green is useless, hence why plants are mostly green (to reflect away the pointless green light).

Animals tend to live in or around plants (for food) or yellow sands. The usual, apparent colour of water may be blue, but fish hide on the bottom of the seabed for safety, which is brown or black. The colour of the animals' skins are coloured so they can blend in and be camouflaged, which makes them brown, black, green, yellow, or whatever.

Some animals are also red. This is to make them look poisonous, and a fair few of them are.

As almost all out food comes from plants or animals, this is why food tends not to be blue. But chemicals can change the colour of food if we want to make a nice design, such as the icing on a cake.

Answer 3

Maybe because certain bright colors, like a really obvious bright sky blue, are more likely to be used by wildlife for other reasons, like....

--signaling to potential mates (blue plumage in birds),
--signaling poisonous or foul smelling prey (colors in stink-bugs or poisonous amphibians),
--camoflauge, to either hide from prey or from predators (many birds and fish species use this coloration to hide, in the sky and underwater, from predators and prey)...

See a trend here? Coloration tends to be on the outside where it serves a purpose, and not inside the animal usually, where the "food value" of the critter is.

In addition....have you ever actually eaten a *green* orange (hint, not from it being less than ripe, ok?)? Or a *blue* slice of bread?

When certain colors *do* show up in the food content of an animal, this is usually a cue that there is significant fungal and/or disease presence in the tissue, meaning it's *spoiled*.

Just my two cents.

Answer 4

Most food is based on natural things that are grown. Blue is not a colour that occurs in nature very often. For example there are actually not that many blue flowers.

Answer 5

Haven't you ever seen blue jello? It's really pretty and different, even though it is technically blueberry.

There is also a variety of corn which is blue.


Have a lovely rest of the day.

Answer 6

Purple is more appealing coming from for example a vegetable like an eggplant and yummy fruit like grapes. Red tomatoes & strawberries. Orange carrots & oranges. Yellow squash & bananas. Green beans & kiwi.

Answer 7

May be you can not find blue foods, but last summer Pepsi produced a kind of coke in blue color.

Answer 8

Blueberries look pretty blue to me

Answer 9

Blue is a high-frequency wavelength. It's harder to get energy from it than green, yellow or red. So, few plants grow in blue.

Answer 10

Other than flowers, blue isn't a naturally occurring color in food.

Answer 11

I've seen cakes covered in blue icing.

Most natural food stuffs are fairly neutral in colour.