In the food science realm, why are foods artificially colored? Is this food science or food nutrition? It is certainly not the latter.

You might think it’s because they want to make their food look good, but there’s another reason …a far deeper reason why companies use artificial colors to make their foods more appealing to consumers. this is thefood science battling the food nutrition.

Why do foods with more vibrant, saturated colors look more appealing to consumers?

Why does a bright-red apple look more appealing than a dull-red apple or a green apple?

Why are foods sold to us in neon green, yellow and orange packages?

The color of food speaks to humans’ instinctive perceptions, about the value of food, items built into our bodies for survival purposes.

Humans are born with brains that are preprogrammed with the ability to learn language; or to recognize certain inherent dangers such as falling off a ledge.

One of the survival strategies our ancestors developed was the ability to recognize foods containing usable energy or nutrition.

Our ancestors could walk through a field and instantly spot foods that contained potent, healing phytonutrients and calories that would give them usable energy, healthy brain function, boost immune function and boost overall survivability.

The natural medicines found in food often appear in bright colors, and calorie-rich foods designed to appeal to primates (such as apples or berries) are also brightly colored.

It is these colors that appeal to our built-in perceptions about the value of food. Birds also tend to judge food by its color and have a similar system.

An apple that has red in its peel actually sends a message: “Hey, I’m here. I have some healing medicine in my skin” and that’s why humans are naturally attracted to more vibrant-looking apples. Berries, fruits, root vegetables and other foods broadcast similar messages through their own coloring.

You may have heard of the rainbow diet, in which you eat foods of different colors. It is based on the idea that different foods carry different energies and provide different types of nutritional medicine. There is a real science to that, and an art as well.

Phytochemicals and their healing effects are categorized by color. There are foods that are purple, blue, green, yellow, red, orange, brown, all the colors of the spectrum and each food has a different medicine.

For example, a red cabbage, which is actually a dull grey, doesn’t look very appealing, but a purple cabbage with a saturated, bright-purple color looks fantastic and creates an innate perception that it is healthier for us. The health quality is indicated by the saturation of the color.

Food-manufacturing companies are exploiting us, the consumers, when they enhance colors artificially. Food science uses harmful dyes to get us to buy. You don’t want a yellowish orange, because that tells you it’s not ripe; if it’s not ripe, it hasn’t developed all its nutrition.

Growers know about this color preference, so some of them in Florida, for example, hijack that instinctual process by dipping some of their oranges in a cancer-causing red dye that makes the peel look more orange.

The FDA has banned that dye from use in foods, because it is a carcinogen, but they say it’s okay to dip an orange in it, because people don’t eat the peel. If a consumer is comparing two oranges, one of them is yellow and one of them is deep, rich orange, which one are they going to choose?

Food science uses artificial colors because, when they make their foods more colorful, it turns on the light switch in our brains that says, “This is good stuff.”

We’ve been fooled; we’ve been drawn like a moth to a flame. If you took one nacho chip with flavors but no color and put it beside another nacho chip with the exact same flavors but lots of artificial colors to make it look more orange, which chip is going to be chosen?

Coal tar and petrochemicals are the sources of the artificial colors that go into our foods, and these artificial coloring ingredients are dangerous to our health. The human body was not designed to eat petrochemicals. So why are there petrochemicals in our foods? Is this supposed to be part of food nutrition?

The food companies are doing it to sell a product and generate a profit, regardless of the health effects on consumers. In fact, more than one artificial color has been banned and pulled off the market over the last several decades because it was ultimately found to cause cancer.

Eventually, artificial colors used in the food supply will likely be outlawed because they contribute to all sorts of health problems, the most notable of which are the symptoms diagnosed as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a behavioral pattern often brought on by Yellow #2 food dye.

Our very instincts are being hijacked by food companies’ using artificial colors to sell their garbage products. Food companies know this and they exploit it to sell us unhealthy foods artificially colored to look nutritious.

To defend ourselves against dishonest food companies, look for artificial food coloring ingredients like Yellow #2, Red #5 or Blue Lake #40, and then avoid them. It’s as simple as that.

Instead, look for natural food coloring ingredients. There are products colored with beet juice, a much healthier way to color food; annatto, a very healthy plant source; or turmeric, a fantastic herb with anticancer, anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties.

All the cheap, low-grade, disease-promoting products in the grocery store tend to use artificial colors. The same snack chips, processed foods, boxed dinner meals, and junk food, made by the biggest food companies, also contain refined white flour, MSG and hydrogenated oils. This is not food nutrition. It may be part of food science

Another example is in the confectionery industry using artificial colors to make its foods such as cake and icing look appealing. Icing is usually made of hydrogenated soybean oil, a nerve toxin, combined with refined sugars, which are dietary poisons that cause diabetes.

The petrochemical-based artificial colors are used to top it off.

There are artificial colors in foods like blueberry muffins or blueberry bagels, too. The ingredients on blueberry bagels have no blueberries listed but plenty of artificial blue and green colors to create the impression of little blueberry bits. Not really fod nutrition, is it?

Do you know what liquid they’re using to hold the color? Propylene glycol. This is the same chemical used to winterize cars. It is antifreeze. You’re eating antifreeze and petrochemicals and that’s just the blueberry part.

The remainder of the bagel has refined sugars, chemical preservatives and refined bleached white flour, which has diabetes-causing contaminants.

In all, the biggest form of dishonesty across the entire food industry is the use of artificial colors that influence consumers to buy and consume foods that actually harmful.

The food companies have figured out how to hack into our perception hardware. They send one message to our eyes, but they manufacture foods out of something entirely different.

These companies employ tens of thousands of food scientists in the United States alone. They figure out how to make foods more palatable and less expensive by using the cheapest ingredients possible while prettying them up with artificial food colors made from petrochemicals. Foiod science is certainly doing a disservice for everyone concerning food nutrition.

The bottom line is that foods, through the use of artificial colors, are sending an incongruent message: “I’m a healthy food.” But the reality is, “I’m harmful junk food.”