Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Does Food Color Influence Taste and Flavor Perception in Humans?

  • Published:
Chemosensory Perception

Abstract

In this paper, we review the empirical literature concerning the important question of whether or not food color influences taste and flavor perception in humans. Although a superficial reading of the literature on this topic would appear to give a somewhat mixed answer, we argue that this is, at least in part, due to the fact that many researchers have failed to distinguish between two qualitatively distinct research questions. The first concerns the role that food coloring plays in the perception of the intensity of a particular flavor (e.g., strawberry, banana, etc.) or taste attribute (e.g., sweetness, saltiness, etc.). The second concerns the role that food coloring plays in the perception of flavor identity. The empirical evidence regarding the first question is currently rather ambiguous. While some researchers have reported a significant crossmodal effect of changing the intensity of a food or drink’s coloring on people’s judgments of taste or flavor intensity, many others have failed to demonstrate any such effect. By contrast, the research findings concerning the second question clearly support the view that people’s judgments of flavor identity are often affected by the changing of a food or drink’s color (be it appropriate, inappropriate, or absent). We discuss the possible mechanisms underlying these crossmodal effects and suggest some of the key directions for future research in order to move our understanding in this area forward.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. It should be noted that the near absence of research means that, as yet, there is nothing much to say about vision’s influence, if any, on the oral–somatosensory attributes of flavor (see Christensen 1983; de Wijk et al. 2004; Frost and Janhoj 2007 for exceptions; see Verhagen and Engelen 2006 for a review).

  2. Over the years, researchers have looked at color’s role in influencing people’s perception of the taste and flavor of many different foods, including jellies (Moir 1936), cake (DuBose et al. 1980; Moir 1936; Tom et al. 1987), chocolate (Duncker 1939; Levitan et al. 2008; Shankar et al. 2009), syrups (Kanig 1955), sherbets (Hall 1958), wine gums (Teerling 1992), and yogurt (Norton and Johnson 1987). However, more recently, the majority of the research has tended to use various different drinks, beverages, and solutions as the stimuli of choice. Most likely, this research focus on colored drinks (be they carbonated or uncarbonated) reflects both the ease of stimulus control and creation that such experimental materials afford and also the fact that color provides one of the few distinctive non-olfactory features of such stimuli (see Christensen 1985; Oram et al. 1995). Given this bias in the literature, we have also chosen to focus our review primarily on those studies that have investigated the effect of color on taste and flavor perception in various solutions, drinks, and beverages.

  3. Perceptual effects are usually defined in terms of a change in perceptual sensitivity, such as a change in the d′ measure that can be derived using signal detection theory (e.g., Green and Swets 1966). By contrast, changes in decisional criteria, possibly reflecting a response bias or change in the criteria for responding adopted by participants (such as, for example, participants simply being more likely to respond that a flavor, odor, or taste is present whenever a color is added to a liquid; see Engen 1972), may show up in one’s measure of bias (c or beta).

  4. Note here also that many of the demonstrations of the influence of color on taste and/or flavor in the literature have actually been reported in those studies in which the participants were only given a very small number of stimuli to evaluate (e.g., five or less stimuli in certain of the experiments reported by DuBose et al. 1980; Hoegg and Alba 2007b; Hyman 1983; Lavin and Lawless 1998; Morrot et al. 2001; Oram et al. 1995; Stillman 1993; or 6–15 stimuli in the studies reported by Alley and Alley 1998; Shankar et al. 2009). This may be particularly important as people appear to quickly learn that the color of a beverage no longer predicts a particular taste (see Stevenson et al. 2000).

  5. Note that we do not wish to argue that decisional biases in the context of food colorings’ influence on multisensory flavor perception are not, in and of themselves, interesting. They most certainly are. Our point here is rather that the decisional biases that are elicited not simply by the color of the foodstuff itself, but rather by the ecologically invalid context in which the participants in these laboratory studies often find themselves, may not be especially informative (see also Garber et al. 2001, 2003 for a similar argument). Our concern is that the results of such studies may say more about how participants respond when placed in an ecologically invalid laboratory context than they do about color’s influence on flavor perception in the real world.

  6. The one exception to this claim comes from one of the conditions in Zampini et al.’s (2007, Experiment 2) study in which participants’ flavor identification responses for the strawberry-flavored solutions were not significantly affected by the changes that were introduced into the colors of the drinks. However, given that the numerical trends were in the appropriate direction, this null result may simply reflect a lack of statistical power.

  7. Though, of course, there may be some practical challenges associated with trying to taste a colored solution while at the time speaking out loud. One could though instead ask the participant to read out a list of words silently in their head or else to engage in some other highly attention-demanding task, for example, monitoring a rapid serial visual presentation stream for occasionally presented targets (e.g., see Santangelo and Spence 2008).

References

  • Alley RL, Alley TR (1998) The influence of physical state and color on perceived sweetness. J Psychology: Interdisciplinary Applied 132:561–568

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Ashkenazi A, Marks LE (2004) Effect of endogenous attention on detection of weak gustatory and olfactory flavors. Percept Psychophys 66:596–608

    Google Scholar 

  • Auvray M, Spence C (2008) The multisensory perception of flavor. Conscious Cogn 17:1016–1031

    Google Scholar 

  • Bartoshuk LM (1975) Taste mixtures: is mixture suppression related to compression? Physiol Behav 14:643–649

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Bayarri S, Calvo C, Costell E, Duran L (2001) Influence of color on perception of sweetness and fruit flavor of fruit drinks. Food Sci Technol Int 7:399–404

    Google Scholar 

  • Bertelson P, Aschersleben G (1998) Automatic visual bias of perceived auditory location. Psychon Bull Rev 5:482–489

    Google Scholar 

  • Blackwell L (1995) Visual clues and their effects on odour assessment. Nutr Food Sci 5:24–28

    Google Scholar 

  • Brice BA (1954) Color and its relationship to food investigations. In Farrell KT, Wagner JR, Peterson MS, MacKinney G (eds) Color in foods: A symposium sponsored by the Quartermaster Food and Container Institute for the Armed Forces Quartermaster Research and Development Command U. S. Army Quartermaster Corps. National Academy of Sciences - National Research Council: Washington, pp. 4–16

  • Cain WS (1979) To know with the nose: keys to odor identification. Science 203:467–470

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Cardello AV (1994) Consumer expectations and their role in food acceptance. In: MacFie HJH, Thomson DMH (eds) Measurement of food preferences. Blackie Academic & Professional, London, pp 253–297

    Google Scholar 

  • Cardello AV (1996) The role of the human senses in food acceptance. In: Meiselman HL, McFie HJH (eds) Food choice, acceptance and consumption. Blackie Academic & Professional, New York, pp 1–82

    Google Scholar 

  • Cardello AV (2007) Measuring consumer expectations to improve food product development. In: MacFie HJH (ed) Consumer-led food product development. Woodhead Publishing, Cambridge, pp 223–261

    Google Scholar 

  • Chaiken S (1980) Heuristic vs systematic information processing and the use of source versus message cues in persuasion. J Pers Soc Psychol 29:752–766

    Google Scholar 

  • Chan MM, Kane-Martinelli C (1997) The effect of color on perceived flavor intensity and acceptance of foods by young adults and elderly adults. J Am Diet Assoc 97:657–659

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Chen Y-C, Spence C (2010) When hearing the bark helps to identify the dog: semantically-congruent sounds modulate the identification of masked pictures. Cognition 114:389–404

    Google Scholar 

  • Christensen C (1983) Effects of color on aroma, flavor and texture judgments of foods. J Food Sci 48:787–790

    Google Scholar 

  • Christensen C (1985) Effect of color on judgments of food aroma and food intensity in young and elderly adults. Perception 14:755–762

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Davis RG (1981) The role of nonolfactory context cues in odor identification. Percept Psychophys 30:83–89

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • de Craen AJ, Roos PJ, Leonard de Vries A, Kleijnen J (1996) Effect of colour of drugs: systematic review of perceived effect of drugs and of their effectiveness. Br Med J 313:1624–1626

    Google Scholar 

  • de Wijk RA, Polet IA, Engelen L et al (2004) Amount of ingested custard dessert as affected by its color, odor, and texture. Physiol Behav 82:397–403

    Google Scholar 

  • Delwiche J (2004) The impact of perceptual interactions on perceived flavor. Food Qual Prefer 15:137–146

    Google Scholar 

  • Demattè ML, Sanabria D, Spence C (2006) Cross-modal associations between odors and colors. Chem Senses 31:531–538

    Google Scholar 

  • Desor J, Beauchamp G (1974) The human capacity to transmit olfactory information. Percept Psychophys 16:551–556

    Google Scholar 

  • Dolnick E (2008) Fish or foul? The New York Times, September 2. Downloaded from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/opinion/02dolnick.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=chocolate%20strawberry%20yogurt&st=cse on 07/07/09

  • DuBose CN, Cardello AV, Maller O (1980) Effects of colorants and flavorants on identification, perceived flavor intensity, and hedonic quality of fruit-flavored beverages and cake. J Food Sci 45:1393–1399, 1415

    Google Scholar 

  • Duncker K (1939) The influence of past experience upon perceptual properties. Am J Psychol 52:255–265

    Google Scholar 

  • Engen T (1972) The effect of expectation on judgments of odour. Acta Psychol 36:450–458

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Ernst MO, Banks MS (2002) Humans integrate visual and haptic information in a statistically optimal fashion. Nature 415:429–433

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Ernst MO, Bülthoff HH (2004) Merging the senses into a robust percept. Trends Cogn Sci 8:162–169

    Google Scholar 

  • Eskenazi B, Cain WS, Friend K (1986) Exploration of olfactory aptitude. Bull Psychon Soc 24:203–206

    Google Scholar 

  • Fletcher L, Heymann H, Ellersieck M (1991) Effects of visual masking techniques on the intensity rating of sweetness of gelatins and lemonades. J Sens Stud 6:179–191

    Google Scholar 

  • Francis FJ (1977) Color and appearance as dominating sensory properties of food. In: Birch GG, Brennan JG, Parker KJ (eds) Sensory properties of foods. Applied Science, Barking, pp 45–47

    Google Scholar 

  • Frank RA, Byram J (1988) Taste–smell interactions are tastant and odorant dependent. Chem Senses 13:445–455

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Frank R, Ducheny K, Mize S (1989) Strawberry odor, but not red color, enhances the sweetness of sucrose solutions. Chem Senses 14:371–377

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Frick RW (1995) Accepting the null hypothesis. Mem Cogn 23:132–138

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Frost MB, Janhoj T (2007) Understanding creaminess. Int Dairy J 17:1298–1311

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Garber LL Jr, Hyatt EM, Starr RG Jr (2001) Placing food color experimentation into a valid consumer context. J Food Prod Mark 7(3):3–24

    Google Scholar 

  • Garber LL Jr, Hyatt EM, Starr RG Jr (2003) Measuring consumer response to food products. Food Qual Prefer 14:3–15

    Google Scholar 

  • Garber LL Jr, Hyatt EM, Boya ÜÖ (2008) The mediating effects of the appearance of nondurable consumer goods and their packaging on consumer behavior. In: Schifferstein HNJ, Hekkert P (eds) Product experience. Elsevier, London, pp 581–602

    Google Scholar 

  • Gifford SR, Clydesdale FM (1986) The psychophysical relationship between color and sodium chloride concentrations in model systems. J Food Prot 49:977–982

    Google Scholar 

  • Gifford SR, Clydesdale FM, Damon RA Jr (1987) The psychophysical relationship between color and salt concentrations in chicken flavored broths. J Sens Stud 2:137–147

    Google Scholar 

  • González J, Barros-Loscertales A, Pulvermüller F, Meseguer V, Sanjuán A, Belloch V et al (2006) Reading cinnamon activates olfactory brain regions. NeuroImage 32:906–912

    Google Scholar 

  • Gottfried JA, Dolan RJ (2003) The nose smells what the eye sees: crossmodal visual facilitation of human olfactory perception. Neuron 39:375–386

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Green DM, Swets JA (1966) Signal detection theory and psychophysics. Wiley, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Hall RL (1958) Flavor study approaches at McCormick and Company, Inc. In: A. D. Little Inc. (ed) Flavor research and food acceptance: a survey of the scope of flavor and associated research, compiled from papers presented in a series of symposia given in 1956–1957. Reinhold, New York, pp 224–240

    Google Scholar 

  • Hoegg J, Alba JW (2007a) Linguistic framing of sensory experience: there is some accounting for taste. In: Lowrey TM (ed) Psycholinguistic phenomena in marketing communications. Erlbaum, Mahwah, pp 3–21

    Google Scholar 

  • Hoegg J, Alba JW (2007b) Taste perception: more than meets the tongue. J Consum Res 33:490–498

    Google Scholar 

  • Hutchings JB (1977) The importance of visual appearance of foods to the food processor and the consumer. In: Birch GG, Brennan JG, Parker KJ (eds) Sensory properties of foods. Applied Science Publishers, London, pp 45–57

    Google Scholar 

  • Hyman A (1983) The influence of color on the taste perception of carbonated water preparations. Bull Psychon Soc 21:145–148

    Google Scholar 

  • Institute of Food Technologists (1980) Food colors. J Food Technol 34(7):77–84

    Google Scholar 

  • Intraub H (1984) Conceptual masking: the effects of subsequent visual events on memory for pictures. J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 10:115–125

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • ISO (1992) Standard 5492: terms relating to sensory analysis. International Organization for Standardization

  • ISO (2008) Standard 5492: terms relating to sensory analysis. International Organization for Standardization

  • Johnson J (1982) Psychophysical relationships between colour and sweetness in fruit flavored solutions. Ph.D. thesis. University of Massachusetts at Amherst

  • Johnson J, Clydesdale FM (1982) Perceived sweetness and redness in colored sucrose solutions. J Food Sci 47:747–752

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson JL, Dzendolet E, Damon R, Sawyer M, Clydesdale FM (1982) Psychophysical relationships between perceived sweetness and color in cherry-flavored beverages. J Food Prot 45:601–606

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson JL, Dzendolet E, Clydesdale FM (1983) Psychophysical relationships between perceived sweetness and redness in strawberry-flavored beverages. J Food Prot 46:21–25, 28

    Google Scholar 

  • Jönsson FU, Tchekhova A, Lönner P, Olsson MJ (2005) A metamemory perspective on odor naming and identification. Chem Senses 30:353–365

    Google Scholar 

  • Kanig JL (1955) Mental impact of colors in foods studied. Food Field Reporter 23:57

    Google Scholar 

  • Keast RSJ, Dalton PH, Breslin PAS (2004) Flavour interactions at the sensory level. In: Taylor AJ, Roberts DD (eds) Flavour perception. Blackwell Scientific, Oxford, pp 228–255

    Google Scholar 

  • Koch C, Koch EC (2003) Preconceptions of taste based on color. J Psychol: Interdisciplinary Applied 137:233–242

    Google Scholar 

  • Kostyla AS (1978) The psychophysical relationships between color and flavor of some fruit flavored beverages. PhD thesis, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

  • Koza BJ, Cilmi A, Dolese M, Zellner DA (2005) Color enhances orthonasal olfactory intensity and reduces retronasal olfactory intensity. Chem Senses 30:643–649

    Google Scholar 

  • Laing DG, Link C, Jinks AL, Hutchinson I (2002) The limited capacity of humans to identify the components of taste mixtures and taste–odour mixtures. Perception 31:617–635

    Google Scholar 

  • Lau K-N, Post G, Kagan A (1995) Using economic incentives to distinguish perception bias from discrimination ability in taste tests. J Mark Res 32:140–151

    Google Scholar 

  • Lavin J, Lawless H (1998) Effects of color and odor on judgments of sweetness among children and adults. Food Qual Prefer 9:283–289

    Google Scholar 

  • Lecoutre B, Derzko G (2001) Asserting the smallness of effects in ANOVA. Methods Psychological Research 6:1–32

    Google Scholar 

  • Lee L, Frederick S, Ariely D (2006) Try it, you’ll like it: the influence of expectation, consumption, and revelation on preferences for beer. Psychol Sci 17:1054–1058

    Google Scholar 

  • Levitan C, Zampini M, Li R, Spence C (2008) Assessing the role of color cues and people’s beliefs about color–flavor associations on the discrimination of the flavor of sugar-coated chocolates. Chem Senses 33:415–423

    Google Scholar 

  • Maga JA (1974) Influence of color on taste thresholds. Chem Senses Flavor 1:115–119

    Google Scholar 

  • Marks LE (2002) The role of attention in chemosensation. Food Qual Prefer 14:147–155

    Google Scholar 

  • Marks LE, Wheeler ME (1998) Attention and the detectability of weak taste stimuli. Chem Senses 23:19–29

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Marques JF (2006) Specialization and semantic organization: evidence for multiple semantics linked to sensory modalities. Mem Cogn 34:60–67

    Google Scholar 

  • Marshall K, Laing DG, Jinks AL, Hutchinson I (2006) The capacity of humans to identify components in complex odor–taste mixtures. Chem Senses 31:539–545

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Masurovsky BI (1939) How to obtain the right food color. Food Eng 11:13, 55–56

    Google Scholar 

  • McClure SM, Li J, Tomlin D, Cypert KS, Montague LM, Montague PR (2004) Neural correlates of behavioral preference for culturally familiar drinks. Neuron 44:379–387

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • McCullough JM, Martinsen CS, Moinpour R (1978) Application of multidimensional scaling to the analysis of sensory evaluations of stimuli with known attribute structures. J Appl Psychol 63:103–109

    Google Scholar 

  • Moir HC (1936) Some observations on the appreciation of flavour in foodstuffs. J Soc Chem Ind: Chemistry Industry Review 14:145–148

    Google Scholar 

  • Morrot G, Brochet F, Dubourdieu D (2001) The color of odors. Brain Lang 79:309–320

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Navarra J, Alsius A, Soto-Faraco S, Spence C (2009) Assessing the role of attention in the audiovisual integration of speech. Inf Fusion 11:4–11

    Google Scholar 

  • Nitschke JB, Dixon GE, Sarinopoulos I, Short SJ, Cohen JD, Smith EE et al (2006) Altering expectancy dampens neural response to aversive taste in primary taste cortex. Nat Neurosci 9:435–442

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Norton WE, Johnson FN (1987) The influence of intensity of colour on perceived flavour characteristics. Med Sci Res 15:329–330

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Mahony M (1983) Gustatory responses to nongustatory stimuli. Perception 12:627–633

    Google Scholar 

  • O’Mahony M (1992) Understanding discrimination tests: a user-friendly treatment of response bias, rating and ranking R-index texts and their relationship to signal detection. J Sens Stud 7:1–47

    Google Scholar 

  • Odgaard EC, Arieh Y, Marks LE (2003) Cross-modal enhancement of perceived brightness: sensory interaction versus response bias. Percept Psychophys 65:123–132

    Google Scholar 

  • Oram N, Laing DG, Hutchinson I, Owen J, Rose G, Freeman M, Newell G (1995) The influence of flavor and color on drink identification by children and adults. Dev Psychobiol 28:239–246

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Orne MT (1962) On the social psychology of the psychological experiment: with particular reference to demand characteristics and their implications. Am Psychol 17:776–783

    Google Scholar 

  • Österbauer RA, Matthews PM, Jenkinson M, Beckmann CF, Hansen PC, Calvert GA (2005) Color of scents: chromatic stimuli modulate odor responses in the human brain. J Neurophysiol 93:3434–3441

    Google Scholar 

  • Pangborn RM (1960) Influence of color on the discrimination of sweetness. Am J Psychol 73:229–238

    Google Scholar 

  • Pangborn RM, Hansen B (1963) The influence of color on discrimination of sweetness and sourness in pear-nectar. Am J Psychol 76:315–317

    Google Scholar 

  • Pangborn RM, Berg HW, Hansen B (1963) The influence of color on discrimination of sweetness in dry table-wine. Am J Psychol 76:492–495

    Google Scholar 

  • Parr WV, Heatherbell D, White KG (2002) Demystifying wine expertise: olfactory threshold, perceptual skill and semantic memory in expert and novice wine judges. Chem Senses 27:747–755

    Google Scholar 

  • Parr WV, White KG, Heatherbell D (2003) The nose knows: influence of colour on perception of wine aroma. J Wine Res 14:79–101

    Google Scholar 

  • Partan S, Marler P (1999) Communication goes multimodal. Science 283:1272–1273

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Philipsen DH, Clydesdale FM, Griffin RW, Stern P (1995) Consumer age affects response to sensory characteristics of a cherry flavoured beverage. J Food Sci 60:364–368

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Plassmann H, O’Doherty J, Shiv B, Rangel A (2008) Marketing actions can modulate neural representations of experienced pleasantness. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 105:1050–1054

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Posner MI, Nissen MJ, Klein RM (1976) Visual dominance: an information-processing account of its origins and significance. Psychol Rev 83:157–171

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Revonsuo A (1999) Binding and the phenomenal unity of consciousness. Conscious Cogn 8:173–185

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Rolls ET, Baylis LL (1994) Gustatory, olfactory, and visual convergence within the primate orbitofrontal cortex. J Neurosci 14:5437–5452

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Rolls ET, Critchley HD, Mason R, Wakeman EA (1996) Orbitofrontal cortex neurons: role in olfactory and visual association learning. J Neurophysiol 75:1970–1981

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Romeu JV, De Vicente MLS (1968) Influyen los colores en el sabor? [Do colours influence flavour?]. Rev Interam Psicologia 2:143–157

    Google Scholar 

  • Roth HA, Radle LJ, Gifford SR, Clydesdale FM (1988) Psychophysical relationships between perceived sweetness and color in lemon- and lime-flavored drinks. J Food Sci 53(1116–1119):1162

    Google Scholar 

  • Rouanet H (1996) Bayesian methods for assessing importance of effects. Psychol Bull 119:149–158

    Google Scholar 

  • Sakai N (2004) The effect of visual stimuli on perception of flavor. Poster presented at ISOT 2004

  • Santangelo V, Spence C (2008) Is the exogenous orienting of spatial attention truly automatic? Evidence from unimodal and multisensory studies. Conscious Cogn 17:989–1015

    Google Scholar 

  • Sarinopoulos I, Dixon GE, Short SJ, Davidson RJ, Nitschke JB (2006) Brain mechanisms of expectation associated with insula and amygdala response to aversive taste: implications for placebo. Brain Behav Immun 20:120–132

    Google Scholar 

  • Scanlon BA (1985) Race differences in selection of cheese color. Percept Mot Skills 61:314

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Shankar MU, Levitan CA, Prescott J, Spence C (2009) The influence of color and label information on flavor perception. Chemosensory Perception 2:53–58

    Google Scholar 

  • Shankar MU, Levitan CA, Spence C (2010) Does higher level knowledge mediate the interpretation of multisensory cues? Conscious Cogn (in press)

  • Shiv B, Carmon Z, Ariely D (2005) Placebo effects of marketing actions: consumers may get what they pay for. J Mark Res XLII:383–393

    Google Scholar 

  • Skrandies W, Reuther N (2008) Match and mismatch of taste, odor, and color is reflected by electrical activity in the human brain. J Psychophysiol 22:175–184

    Google Scholar 

  • Small DM (2004) Crossmodal integration—insights from the chemical senses. Trends Neurosci 27:120–123

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Smith BC (ed) (2007) Questions of taste: the philosophy of wine. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Spence C (2007) Audiovisual multisensory integration. Acoust Sci Technol 28:61–70

    Google Scholar 

  • Spence C (2008) Multisensory perception. In: Blumenthal H (ed) The big fat duck cook book. Bloomsbury, London, pp 484–485

    Google Scholar 

  • Stevenson RJ (2009) The psychology of flavour. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Stevenson RJ, Oaten M (2008) The effect of appropriate and inappropriate stimulus color on odor discrimination. Percept Psychophys 70:640–646

    Google Scholar 

  • Stevenson RJ, Boakes RA, Wilson JP (2000) Resistance to extinction of conditioned odor perceptions: evaluative conditioning is not unique. J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 26:423–440

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Stillman J (1993) Color influences flavor identification in fruit-flavored beverages. J Food Sci 58:810–812

    Google Scholar 

  • Strugnell C (1997) Colour and its role in sweetness perception. Appetite 28:85

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Teerling A (1992) The colour of taste. Chem Senses 17:886

    Google Scholar 

  • Tom G, Barnett T, Lew W, Selmants J (1987) Cueing the consumer: the role of salient cues in consumer perception. J Consum Mark 4(2):23–27

    Google Scholar 

  • Triplett T (1994) Consumers show little taste for clear beverages. Marketing News 28(11):2, 11

    Google Scholar 

  • Urbányi G (1982) Investigation into the interaction of different properties in the course of sensory evaluation. I. The effect of colour upon the evaluation of taste in fruit and vegetable products. Acta Aliment 11:233–243

    Google Scholar 

  • Valentin D, Chrea C, Nguyen DH (2006) Taste–odour interactions in sweet taste perception. In: Spillane W (ed) Optimising sweet taste in foods. Woodhead Publishing Limited, Cambridge, pp 66–84

    Google Scholar 

  • Veldhuizen MG, Nachtigal DJ, Small DM (2009) Taste cortex contributes to odor quality coding. Chem Senses 34:A8

    Google Scholar 

  • Verhagen JV, Engelen L (2006) The neurocognitive bases of human multimodal food perception: sensory integration. Neurosci Biobehav Rev 30:613–650

    Google Scholar 

  • Williams AA, Langren SP, Noble AC (1984a) Influence of appearance on the assessment of aroma in Bordeaux wines by trained assessors. J Inst Brew 90:250–253

    Google Scholar 

  • Williams AA, Langron SP, Timberlake CF, Bakker J (1984b) Effect of colour on the assessment of ports. Int J Food Sci Technol 19:659–671

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson T, Klaaren K (1992) Expectation whirls me round: the role of affective expectations on affective experiences. In: Clear MS (ed) Review of personality and social psychology: emotion and social behavior. Sage, Newbury Park, pp 1–31

    Google Scholar 

  • Yeomans M, Chambers L, Blumenthal H, Blake A (2008) The role of expectancy in sensory and hedonic evaluation: the case of smoked salmon ice-cream. Food Qual Prefer 19:565–573

    Google Scholar 

  • Zampini M, Sanabria D, Phillips N, Spence C (2007) The multisensory perception of flavor: assessing the influence of color cues on flavor discrimination responses. Food Qual Prefer 18:975–984

    Google Scholar 

  • Zampini M, Wantling E, Phillips N, Spence C (2008) Multisensory flavor perception: assessing the influence of fruit acids and color cues on the perception of fruit-flavored beverages. Food Qual Prefer 19:335–343

    Google Scholar 

  • Zellner DA, Durlach P (2003) Effect of color on expected and experienced refreshment, intensity, and liking of beverages. Am J Psychol 116:633–647

    Google Scholar 

  • Zellner DA, Kautz MA (1990) Color affects perceived odor intensity. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 16:391–397

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Zellner DA, Whitten LA (1999) The effect of color intensity and appropriateness on color-induced odor enhancement. Am J Psychol 112:585–604

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Zellner DA, Bartoli AM, Eckard R (1991) Influence of color on odor identification and liking ratings. Am J Psychol 104:547–561

    CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Charles Spence & Maya U. Shankar

  2. Cognitive Science Program, Occidental College, 1600 Campus Road, Los Angeles, CA, 90041, USA

    Carmel A. Levitan

  3. Center for Mind/Brain Sciences & Department of Cognitive Sciences and Education, University of Trento, Rovereto (TN), Italy

    Massimiliano Zampini

  4. Crossmodal Research Laboratory, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3UD, UK

    Charles Spence

Authors
  1. Charles Spence
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Carmel A. Levitan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Maya U. Shankar
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Massimiliano Zampini
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Charles Spence.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Spence, C., Levitan, C.A., Shankar, M.U. et al. Does Food Color Influence Taste and Flavor Perception in Humans?. Chem. Percept. 3, 68–84 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12078-010-9067-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12078-010-9067-z

Keywords

Search

Navigation