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Comment by reverendsteveii | Hacker News Reader

Fun fact - this is how blue raspberry was created as a flavor. Raspberry flavored things were purple, made from a combination of red and blue dye. The red dye (red no 2) was banned. So companies making raspberry flavored stuff just left the red dye out and said "raspberry is blue now" and we all went "shit yeah it is, always has been! why would raspberry be anything other than blue?"

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I think your story is half-right.

Common varieties of raspberries aren't purple, and I've never heard of raspberry flavor being purple.

So they didn't remove the red to leave blue, because there was never blue in the first place -- they just switched from red to blue, as this lengthy history explains:

https://www.bonappetit.com/entertaining-style/pop-culture/ar...

And it was seen as a benefit because blue stood out more from the other red flavors -- cherry, strawberry, watermelon...

I said "raspberry-flavored things" and I guess in the most inclusive sense raspberries are raspberry-flavored so well done there for making me put one finger in the air in outrage and then silently pull it back down while adopting a thoughtful expression. In a less-inclusive sense, raspberry-flavored things are flavored with "mostly esters of the banana, cherry, and pineapple variety" according to the article so it could be argued that there are a lot of raspberry flavored things (including a dust cloud in space, https://next.voxcreative.com/ad/20726659/space-taste-like-ra...) but funnily enough raspberries aren't one of them.

Mindblowing. More details and photos:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_raspberry_flavor

> Food products labeled as blue raspberry flavor are commonly dyed with a bright blue synthetic food coloring, such as brilliant blue FCF (also called Blue #1) having European food coloring number E133. The blue color was used to differentiate raspberry-flavored foods from cherry-, watermelon-, and strawberry-flavored foods, each of which is typically red. The use of blue dye also partially is due to the FDA's 1976 banning of amaranth-based Red Dye No. 2, which had previously been heavily used in raspberry-flavored products.

And we have always been at war with Eurasia.

My heart raced for a few seconds, thank you!!!

Eurasia -> Eastasia

Good god that’s awful. Like really? And people go along with this? Have they not ever had and actual raspberry?

Two things:

- it's usually sold as "blue raspberry", not "raspberry"; so you know that it's nothing natural here

- it's mostly used in soft-drinks or other foods that are ~~nothing~~ anything but natural

So my guess is that nobody was thinking they were buying something made of actual rasperries; they knew that they were buying something 100% artificial like "mango madness" or "knockout fruit punch"

So nothing but natural, eh? Maybe you meant anything but natural. :)

Oups, you're right; thanks for pointing out my mistake!

Have you had blue raspberry? It's better than actual raspberry, which is why people go along with it.

And it all started because a harmful dye was banned

Do raspberries not taste like raspberries?

What product has "blue raspberry"?

I can only think of one raspberry product I buy, and it doesn't have any dye, and is deep red colored (from the raspberries)

> "What product has "blue raspberry"?

Blue raspberry is a standard slushie colour the world over, in my experience.

https://www.7-eleven.com/products/slurpee/blue-raspberry

Never seen it as a slushie in Italy but we do have azure ice cream. It used to be called "puffo" (=Smurf) but smurfs aren't popular anymore, so now they usually sell it as "marshmallow" or "cotton candy".

But it tastes nothing like raspberry?

>But it tastes nothing like raspberry?

It's not like most ice-cream flavors taste anything like the real thing...

Especially in the US (not Italian artisanal gelato)

In the U.K. I remember it being a novelty flavour for a brief period in the 90s.

I’ve not seen or heard of the idea since then, although this may reflect my own consumer preferences.

Surely no visit to a UK chain cinema (Odeon/Vue) in summer is complete without a refreshing and sugar-free Tango Ice Blast?! It's the "UK’S N0.1 FROZEN DRINK BRAND", according to their own marketing.

And the two original, traditional flavours of Tango Ice Blast are Red (Cherry) and Blue (Raspberry).

In fact, I can't remember ever seeing any other flavours, although according to their website there are others:

https://www.lovetangoiceblast.com/flavours

I have never seen this product or heard the term "blue raspberry" in my life, so probably not around the world.

Blue raspberry is a candy only flavor. It doesn't really taste like raspberry. Its pretty common as a flavor in the us at least, it's one of my favorite candy flavors.

If you eat a bowl of mixed blueberries and raspberries, it actually does taste like blue raspberry. It's a mixture of the two flavors.

Also known as the flavor of Queen's jam (from Sweden), which looks nicer as instead of blueberries, it uses bilberries (whose flesh is deep red).

You're thinking of snozzberries.

I have it on good authority that the snozzberries taste like snozzberries.

You need to be squeezed. Off to the juicing room you go!

>What product has "blue raspberry"?

Berry Blue Jell-o[0].

There are a bunch of others as well, but that's the first one that came to mind.

[0] https://www.kraftheinz.com/jell-o/products/00043000200407-be...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_raspberry_flavor

I guess you're one of today's 10,000: https://xkcd.com/1053/

I feel like you might run into it at a carnival or theme park. It's found in things like candy, Kona ice, extremely artificially flavored drinks, etc. Junk food.

Jolly rancher

Gatorade cool blue used to be blue raspberry

Jello.

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