Red – This bright hue is very energetic and stimulates many senses, which lead directly to your appetite. This is why many fast-food chains include red in their signage and decor. Yellow – Many restaurants also include yellow in their decor, as it is known to increase appetite as well.
Red and yellow are the chief food colors, evoking the tastebuds and stimulating the appetite. Both red and yellow are also effective at grabbing attention. The fast food industry has claimed this combination for a good reason—because it is effective.
Researchers say red can make you the most hungry. It attracts attention, increases your heart rate, and trigger appetite.
The color yellow elicits a feeling of comfort, while red tends to make people feel more hungry and impulsive. Marketing experts refer to the pairing of yellow and red as the "Ketchup and Mustard Theory." Green and earthy tones are used to convey a message of healthiness and environmental responsibility.
As Spoon University points out, red attracts attention and speeds up the body's blood flow. When the blood flow is increased to the digestive system, it speeds up your metabolism and makes you hungry.
Another research project at John Hopkins studied the impact of the colour, named Baker-Miller Pink, and found evidence that it could help suppress appetite as well.
Pink won't stimulate your appetite and the reason is that it's somewhat of an unnatural color. It often makes people think of artificial preservatives or raw meat, according to Kari Hartel, RD, LD. That's one of the reasons why you rarely see pink used in food logos.
Further, it has proven to be an unappetizing color. To that point, researchers say that blue curbs the appetite because it is rarely found in nature (meats, vegetables) and thus we don't have an automatic appetite response to it. Some weight loss experts even recommend that their clients use blue plates and utensils.
The color purple is rarely found in the world of foods. When it is present, it is often attached to foods not everyone enjoys; eggplant, red onions, and purple cabbage. Very few people find these foods tasty enough to drool over, so the color purple rarely makes people feel hungry.
However, brighter shades, such as Aqua, Royal, and Ultramarine Blue, have been known to cause people to feel thirst.
Blue light has the strongest impact. Exposure to blue light (and white light, which contains blue light) during the sensitive period can make it difficult for you to fall asleep and stay asleep. Exposure to white light during the day can have positive effects, including boosting alertness and mood.
Happy colors are usually thought to be bright, warm shades, like yellow, orange, pink and red, or pastels, like peach, light pink and lilac. The brighter and lighter the color, the happier and more optimistic it can make you feel.
Vegetables can be divided into five main colour groups – red, orange/yellow, white/brown, green, and blue/purple. Choose from each colour group each day; some vegetables give you the goodness of more than one colour e.g. cucumber with its green skin and white flesh.
Research studies discovered red to be the best color light to help you sleep, because it increases production of melatonin as well as full darkness. On the other end of the spectrum, blue is the worst. Despite being a calm-inducing color on most occasions, blue is not suitable for lighting a bedroom.
Black – Black is another color that does little to stimulate hunger. Similar to gray, black can quickly decrease appetite and diminish a good mood.
A hormone called leptin signals the body that you're full so you can stop eating. When your stomach is empty, it contracts or collapses, causing hunger pangs. Your blood sugar levels dip, and your stomach produces a hormone called ghrelin, prompting you to eat.
Of all the colors in the spectrum, blue is an appetite suppressant. Weight loss plans suggest putting your food on a blue plate. Or even better than that, put a blue light in your refrigerator and watch your munchies disappear. Or here's another tip: Dye your food blue!
It's even been suggested that you put a blue light in your fridge to discourage you from reaching in for more food. Pink doesn't stimulate your appetite because it's somewhat of an unnatural color and often makes people think of raw meat or artificial preservatives. Gray is another color that people find unappetizing.
Likewise, yellow elicits feelings of happiness, excitement, and cheer. Researchers believe that these colors, especially when used on fast food restaurant signs, create the perfect combination of emotions and feelings to make us feel hungry and want to stop to eat.
The three dyes most consumed–Red 40, Yellow 5 and Yellow 6–are the dyes most likely to cause systemic allergic reactions. These same dyes also contain the cancer-causing contaminants Benzidine, 4-aminobiphenyl and 4-aminoazobenzene. Red 3 has been found to increase the risk of thyroid tumors in rat studies.
By adulthood, the pink/blue color preference shows less of a sex difference. Though women, compared to men, still show a marginally greater preference for pink, both male and female adults prefer blue to pink. This suggests a female preference for pink is not hardwired or sculpted by evolution.
Pink is thought to have a calming effect. 1 One shade known as "drunk-tank pink" is sometimes used in prisons to calm inmates. While pink's calming effect has been demonstrated, researchers of color psychology have found that this effect only occurs during the initial exposure to the color.
One of the items was pink and the other wasn't. The data revealed no evidence of preference for pink in infants. Yet beginning around age 2, boys and girls responded differently to the color: “Girls' liking for pink increased between 2 and 3 years of age and remained high through 4 years.
The specific hue is called Bailey-Miller pink. The colour has previously been used in prisons, psychiatric institutions and gaol “drunk tanks” to help induce calmness and reduce aggression and anxiety.