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Comment by NickC25 | Hacker News Reader

Nice pun.

Jokes aside, that's a good point - but if you think about it, why should we want to ingest something that provides no health value and only exists to make the food product look more visually appealing?

I don't know what kind of epidemiological effects dye has had in the long run, but it just makes no sense to me that as a society we have said "yeah, color our food so it looks more appealing, even though chemically it's probably not great for us". Just sort of odd, honestly.

Nutritious food doesn't always look amazing, and that's completely fine by me. I don't eat food because of the color, I eat food because it's healthy or tasty.

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I agree, if I could uncheck a box that says “coloring” when buying food, I would uncheck that every time. The only issue I have is that we don’t live in a world where that is possible, and food dyes inhabit anything that is wrapped in plastic. It’s very much a “take it or leave it” deal and increasingly more often, I leave it.

I suspect that a major problem is the fact that everything is focus group driven and when given the choice between a frozen drink dyed red with beet juice and the same drink dyed neon red with food dyes, people will gravitate towards the neon red drink because that’s what we’ve been conditioned to believe is higher quality.

As long as people gravitate to the best-looking food item when comparing different foods on a shelf, including meat, there's going to be an incentive to use dyes or apply some process that changes the color.

You may be fine receiving an uglier food item, but I bet you don't seek it out when judging equally-priced alternatives.

> but it just makes no sense to me that as a society we have said "yeah, color our food so it looks more appealing, even though chemically it's probably not great for us". Just sort of odd, honestly.

How is this meaningfully different from adding salts and sugars to make food taste more appealing?

While there are a relative few who would be happy with a bland looking, bland tasting shake for 3 meals a day, most people wouldn't. Biologically, it's _normal_ for people to want food to look and taste appealing.

Adding ingredients like salt, which are a naturally occurring substance that can positively affect the taste of a food (as well as acting as a natural preservative in some cases) is completely different than adding an artificial chemical that is designed to make the food look fresher but has no actual health or taste benefits.

Also, of course we want food to taste good, that's half the point of eating and why people enjoy eating. Adding a coloring dye doesn't affect taste.

Which is why nobody uses food colouring outside of (especially children's) baking at home. But in ready meals and other prepared foods sold in supermarkets, they're adding it to make you buy it, not for your pleasure while eating it. 'Ooh it looks so vibrant and fresh' or whatever. Or in the case of sweets etc. to hint at the flavour.

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