Why are there no blue foods? | They are very hard to find!

You may have asked yourself sometime.Why are there no blue foods, like blue apples ? Why have we never had the pleasure of eating blue or banana strawberries of the same color? Nature gives us attractive fruits of intense red, orange, green or yellow color, but never blue.Never blue fruits, although you think blueberries are...

Nor do we find this coloring in the animal world of a so let's say, frequent.Some birds, no doubt, but very few.And it is possible that the fish come to your head right now, but the effect of that blue color is basically due to the way the light bounces in its flakes, but when we cook them and put them on our plates, none has an authentic and pure blue color.

Why is there no blue food?

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Why are there no blue foods? Chemistry issue

We must first make a small concretion: we often call blueberries, certain grapes, plums, currants, blackberries blue fruits … But its coloration is slightly purple, approaching the violaceo.They do not have, as the children would say, of an authentic “smurf color”.

Blueberries, their coloring is not really blue, but violates

We could say, maybe, that This color seems to be "almost" banned in vegetables. Why? Well, we know that most plants have that green color due to chlorophyll, but blue is a really complex pigment to get in the natural world.Whenever you see a blue flower, for example, you should know that this is due to a chemical very, very alkaline. An unusual feature, since most plants and animals have a slightly more acidic metabolism.

Sometimes many plants that have blue flowers, end up turning pink or violet due to the usual acidic soils they nourish.It is an organic pigment, called anthocyanin , which makes, for example, our plants turn red in a very acidic environment, violet in a neutral and blue setting if the soil is alkaline.A simple example: anthocyanin added to an acidic medium will cause red roses.Antiocyanin combined with an alkaline medium, will give you blue violets.

The shortage of blue pigments

There is a clear reality: blue pigments are quite complex and scarce in our nature.Hence, blue stones (mostly in the form of exclusive precious stones), we don't have « blue earth », there are not too many animals with this color.

Some birds, no doubt, and of great beauty, but not many, and if the sea animals have that light blue coloration it is more than nothing because their skins, their scales, scatter the light by way of iridescence.That is, it is not a pigment as such.We could say, then, that this hue has not had much evolutionary success.

Do you find appetizing blue foods?

We also have to take into account another interesting aspect, do the test to see for yourself.What would you eat before, a blue strawberry or a strawberry of attractive red color? It seems that at the evolutionary level we have also opted more for red, yellow or green colors… these fruits are always rich in vitamins, antioxidants, lycopene, etc..Before the blue foods.The blue we leave normally for the field of confectionery, where we always use, yes, artificial colors.

Another reason why you could having such a shortage of natural blue foods is, according to Chris Gunter, professor of horticultural science at North Carolina State University, that blue is one of the colors with the most wave energy in the visible light spectrum.better and way more efficient, plants use light, and if they were blue it would be because they are reflecting light rather than using it to develop.

Another explanation about the lack of blue foods , especially in those of vegetable origin, it points out that the plants in their evolution opted for red, because of the contrast that it created with the chlorophyll green, present in all plants.The goal of many vegetables that have fruits is that Animals are able to distinguish their fruit or flower from their foliage, so that they consume them and spread their seeds through different places.So, if you are a plant and want to generate a fruit or a flower, the ideal thing to stand out among your leaves is that it be of red color.Yes, blue may not have spread so much in nature because it was not the most effective in this regard, red won!

As a last curiosity about blue foods: there are chickens Araucana race that usually offer us flashy and unique blue eggs .However, scientists explain that this phenomenon is actually due to a retrovirus.

Blue eggs of the Araucana hen

And now tell us, would you be attracted to eating blue foods, do you see them attractive?

If you liked this article , do not miss the curious case of 100% black chickens.