Crossmodal Research Laboratory, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
J Food Sci. 2023 Mar;88(S1):5-20. doi: 10.1111/1750-3841.16439. Epub 2022 Dec 29.
While there has long been public concern over the use of artificial/synthetic food colors, it should be remembered that food and drink products (e.g., red wine) have been purposefully colored for millennia. This narrative historical review highlights a number of reasons that food and drink have been colored, including to capture the shopper's visual attention through to signaling the likely taste/flavor. Over the course of the last century, there has, on occasion, also been interest in the playful, or sometimes even deliberately discombobulating, use of food coloring by modernist chefs and others. The coloring (or absence of color) of food and drink can, though, sometimes also take on more of a symbolic meaning, and, in a few cases, specific food colors may acquire a signature, or branded (i.e., semantic) association. That said, with food color being associated with so many different potential "meanings," it is an open question as to which meaning the consumer will associate with any given instance of color in food, and what role context may play in their decision. Laboratory-based sensory science research may not necessarily successfully capture the full range of meanings that may be associated with food color in the mind of the consumer. Nevertheless, it seems likely that food color will continue to play an important role in dictating consumer behavior in the years to come, even though the visual appearance of food is increasingly being mediated via technological means, including virtual and augmented reality.
长期以来，人们一直对人工/合成食用色素的使用表示关注，但应该记住，食品和饮料产品（例如红酒）已经有几千年的历史了。本文通过历史叙述的方式，重点介绍了食品和饮料着色的一些原因，包括通过吸引顾客的视觉注意力，来传递产品可能的味道/风味。在上个世纪，现代主义厨师和其他人有时也会出于娱乐目的，甚至故意使用食用色素，使食物和饮料呈现出丰富多彩的效果。然而，食品和饮料的颜色（或无色）有时也可能具有更具象征意义，在某些情况下，特定的食品颜色可能会获得标志性或品牌（即语义）关联。也就是说，由于食品颜色与许多不同的潜在“意义”相关联，因此对于消费者来说，他们会将任何给定的颜色实例与哪种意义联系起来，以及语境在他们的决策中可能扮演什么角色，这是一个悬而未决的问题。基于实验室的感官科学研究不一定能成功捕捉到消费者心目中与食品颜色相关的所有意义。然而，尽管食品的视觉外观越来越多地通过虚拟和增强现实等技术手段来呈现，但食用色素似乎仍将在未来几年继续在决定消费者行为方面发挥重要作用。
