Of all the colors in the rainbow, do you know which ones are making you fat? Do you know which ones are making you lose weight? Which color is the healthiest? According to Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab, the color of the plate you’re eating food off of affects your appetite. Some colors are more prone to make you overeat, others to make you lose your appetite completely.
For example, some of the colors that are more prone to make you overeat include turquoise, yellow, orange, and red. In general, colors that stimulate someone’s appetite are colors that make one feel happy and calm. Tropical waters and ocean waves tend to calm down most people and the color associated with these tropical waters is turquoise. It causes people to feel happy, relaxed, and blithe. The color of the sun, yellow, also tends to make people happy and cheerful. Yellow is even the color widely associated with the images of smiley faces; therefore, being the overall symbol of happiness. Both turquoise and yellow cheer people up and happy people are proven more likely to eat than depressed people. In contrast, orange and red don’t stimulate one’s appetite through happiness. The color orange increases the sensation of hunger by stimulating mental activity. The color red is proven to increase blood pressure, elevate heart rate, and in turn, cause hunger. These four colors, if they are the color of the plate you’re eating off of, are most likely to cause you to overeat and binge eat.
On the other hand, the colors that aid as an appetite suppressant include gray, black, brown, purple, and blue. Colors that suppress appetite are usually colors that are related to unappetizing or unnatural things. For example, the colors gray, black, and brown are familiarized ashes and burnt food; therefore, making the food next to it seem unappetizing. Purple and blue are rare colors when it comes to natural foods. Purple, specifically, is only associated with foods such as eggplants or red onions and these foods aren’t enjoyed by everyone. In comparison, blue isn’t associated with any specific food and although it tends to promote calmness, when it comes to eating, blue suppresses one’s appetite. Calmness usually makes people eat, but if someone is overly calm, they are more prone to sleeping than eating. In summary, these colors are used as appetite suppressants because they turn people away from food using either disgust or laziness. Although you may consider using these plate colors to be bad, they are helpful if you are trying to lose weight and moderate meal proportions since you will tend to eat less.
Now that you’ve learned which colors stimulate and suppress your appetite, you’re probably wondering which color plate is the best one to purchase. The best color to surround yourself with when eating is green. The color green is the healthiest color. Although it stimulates your appetite, it makes you more prone to eat abundant and healthy foods. It attracts people to the idea of eating salads and nutritious greens. Overall, green increases the amount of food you consume, but only in relation to healthy foods.
In conclusion, there are pros and cons to all color plates. To some, using certain plate colors to suppress appetite is useful if they are trying to obtain a healthy weight; to others, using colors to stimulate appetite is useful if they plan on adding on a few pounds. And for those looking to have an overall healthier diet, using green plates is the best option when it comes to appetite enhancers and suppressants.
http://weightloss.allwomenstalk.com/colors-that-decrease-and-increase-your-appetite/10/
http://foodpsychology.cornell.edu/outreach/color_plate.html
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My friend and I always discussed how we could eat a whole bag/box of Cheezits, Goldfish, or Cheetos when my friend realized that it may be the color orange that drives us to eat so much. We never tested out our theory – we were in 8th grade – but this article seems to help prove both of our points: http://www.foodpyramid.com/healthy-eating/colors-and-appetite-colors-that-suppress-and-stimulate-apettiete-9535/. It says red and yellow both stimulate appetite, so I assume mixing them to get orange would have an equally strong effect.
What came to my mind right away when I read your first couple of sentences were the dining commons. When you think about the colors of the bowls and plates that they have at the dining commons what do you typically see? Oranges, reds, yellows, and greens. Based off of what you told me those are mostly all of the colors that you mentioned that are prone to making you overeat. Although I never realized this correlation before it kind of makes sense to me. As for the green, maybe that is promoting the fruit and salad options that we have at the dining commons. I think that it would be interesting to do a study where you put the same amount of a certain food on different colored plates and put them in front of different people who you conclude have around the same appetite. From there see based on what you said in your blog post whether or not your statements remain true. See if people who have blue plates are less likely to overeat than people with yellow or red plates. Also, a question I have is what the verdict is for white plates?
I loved this post! I am always looking for new ways to think about the food I am eating and have a new perspective on it. Its very calming knowing the different health risks and benefits that one will know just from looking at the color of your food. I also love how this post gears more people to eating a healthier option. The example of natural colored food compared to unnatural food is eye opening and very informative to someone who may not know every health benefit of certain foods. In an effort to follow what this post suggests, here are seven ways to eat greener.
http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/seven-ways-to-eat-green-and-inadvertently-lose-weight.html