... colours had a taste?

Colours clearly impact our taste experience. We expect that strawberry ice cream is reddish and that a cake is golden-brown. If the cake is green instead, our previous experiences tell us that this is due to artificial colour. We might expect the cake to taste like apple or kiwi but not like chocolate or orange instead.

But what if colours really had a taste? Would green taste fresh, bitter or sour? And would blue taste sweet or sharp? Would red be sweet and spicy while yellow would be sour or bitter? And would white have any taste at all?

And what about colour blind people? Could they guess the colour from the taste or would everything taste just the way it “normally” does?

Would the only taste of food come from the colour? Or would the colour only add a nuance in the taste or add something else to the taste experience like the consistency of a food?

However, in one way we can taste colours, at least when it comes to a fruit or vegetable that is becoming ripe and perishes afterwards. We can tell from the taste if an apple is still unripe and green, perfectly ripe and nicely red or already becoming old and brown. But we can also be fooled by our taste buds. While red and yellow peppers are difficult to distinguish by taste, green peppers taste completely different. If you don’t believe me, here is a little experiment: Take apples at different stages of ripeness, peppers of different colours or whichever other food you would like to try and cut all into small pieces. Close your eyes and ask someone else to give you a piece. Can you guess what you are eating, and which colour the piece has?

It is possible that some of you can taste colours just like you can tell when you are eating something sweet, sour or bitter, as for some people the perception of one stimulus is connected with more than one sensory impression. This phenomenon is called synaesthesia and affected people can, for example, feel things they see like a hug or a tap on the shoulder, see music or hear colours.