Does color affect taste?

This question pertains to the condition known as synaesthesia. For example, a color might have a "taste" associated with it.

The best answer is at Color Matters: How Color Affects Taste and Smell

A student's science project on this topic: How color affects taste

Color and Taste - Some Answers from Others

Miss Jackson: Last year a class took three bottles of identical lemon lime soda. Into one they put several drops of blue food coloring. Into another they put an identical amount of red food coloring. Into the third they put an identical amount of green food color.They let 100 students try the three sodas and asked which they liked the best. The majority said they liked the blue soda the best because they liked the blue berry flavor the best! The zinger, remember, is that they all were lemon-lime in flavor.

Kim: My 12 year old son did the same science project with vanilla pudding and most people chose the "chocolate" pudding which in reality was vanilla with food coloring....soooo color does affect the senses.

lmn: I tested 10 people: i gave em each a blue and an original cookie and had them taste each of the colors, they all said that the original one tasted better even though they were all the same thing.

CC: My daughter, age 9, did the same basic experiment. However, we used sugar dough cookie mix and mixed 7 different colors for 10 classmates to try. She thought they would all go for the black cookie, thinking that they would think it was chocolate. But the colors blue, green and red were the cookies of choice.

Chris Willard.: Take some common foods and shine different colored lights on them and ask people what they find appetizing when the colors of say mashed potatos turn green or blue.

JJStaple.: Good question. It is said "hunger is the best appetizer" so I would imagine that our visual purple photodetectors are the complement and match filter for green such as in salads. Discoloration of food probably was primitive threat warning system, like red sunrise for sailors, although some green apples are ripe and others are not and might evoke memory of a belly ache. Story goes that before early demonstration of fruit bowl on new color TV, engineers at RCA Sarnoff Labs switched the RGB cables. A non-yellow banana would not be appetizing and a hot dog may look more appetizing with yellow or brown mustard--depending on one's taste. De gustibus non est dispudandum.

Links to More Science Projects

Here's a compilation of all the pages with information from students who are conducting scientific color experiments.

Color and Heat Absorption

Color and Water Evaporation

Plant Growth & Light Color