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- People who are color blind might not have strong feelings about how food looks.
- Studies say people who are color blind often don’t mind trying new foods and aren’t as bothered by foods they don’t know.
- The fusiform gyrus, which helps us see and judge food, reacts less to color in people who are color blind.
- Color usually gives us clues about food safety or if it looks good, but these clues might be weaker for people who are color blind.
- Changing colors or how things look might help people who are picky eaters or worried about food, especially in therapy.
Color Blindness and Picky Eating: Is There a Link?
We often decide what we like to eat based on how food looks. But what if someone sees colors differently, like if they are color blind? More and more research suggests that people who are color blind might be less picky eaters and more willing to try new foods. This interesting idea shows us how our brains, how we see things, and how we act around food are connected. It also gives us new ideas for helping people who don’t eat a lot of different foods or have problems with food.
What Is Color Blindness?
Color blindness, or color vision deficiency (CVD), is when people have trouble seeing the difference between certain colors. This usually happens because of genes that affect cone cells in the eye. Cone cells are special cells that help us see colors. There are three main types of cone cells (red, green, and blue). If something is wrong with any of these, it can cause different kinds of color blindness.
- Red-green deficiency (the most common kind)
- Blue-yellow deficiency
- Monochromacy or total color blindness (very rare)
Color blindness mostly affects men. About 4% of people around the world have some form of color blindness. It’s more common in men because the genes for red-green color blindness are on the X chromosome. Men have only one X chromosome, so if there’s a problem on that chromosome, they will likely have color blindness.
People with color blindness usually get used to it, but they can have some problems. For example, it can be hard to tell if fruits are ripe, to understand traffic lights, or to see mold on bread. These problems can also affect how they see food. This makes us wonder—does seeing food in a “less colorful” way change how people who are color blind eat?
Picky Eating and Food Neophobia Explained
Picky eating means always refusing to eat certain foods because of how they taste, feel, smell, or—importantly here—how they look. Many kids start out as picky eaters, and it’s normal as they grow. But sometimes, people stay picky eaters as adults. They might have strict rules about food or only eat a very small number of foods.
At its worst, picky eating can become food neophobia. This is when someone doesn’t want to try new or unknown foods at all. It’s not just being stubborn. It comes from complicated feelings and how their senses react. Food neophobia is common in
- Children
- People who are very sensitive to their senses
- People who worry a lot or have obsessive thoughts
- People with certain brain differences (like autism)
It’s important to understand food neophobia because it can cause people to not get the right nutrients, feel stressed in social situations, and have a lower quality of life. Many things can cause food neophobia, but one of the strongest is how food looks, especially its color.
Why Food Color Affects Emotions and Taste
Color really changes how we think about food. From when we are young, we learn to connect certain colors with how fresh, tasty, and safe food is. For example
- Red foods (like strawberries and tomatoes) often seem sweet or ripe.
- Green often means fresh, but too much green can make us think something is unripe or bitter.
- Blue or purple foods are not common in nature and can look strange or unappetizing.
Spence (2015) showed that when people tasted the same drink in different colors, they said the red drink was 10–20% sweeter than the green or blue ones. This shows how color changes what we expect food to taste like (Spence, 2015).
If food color is not what we expect, it can make us feel uneasy. When food has colors we don’t expect—like green ketchup or blue eggs—many people feel disgusted right away, even if the taste is the same.
This is especially true for people who are very sensitive to visuals. Even small color changes can make them react badly. Feelings like fear, dislike, and worry often come from our instinct to avoid food that is spoiled or poisonous. These instincts depend a lot on how we see color.
Color Blindness and Emotionally Neutral Eating
But what happens when these strong color feelings are not as strong? Research by Laeng & Frøyen (2024) found that people with color blindness said they had weaker emotional reactions to pictures of food. This suggests that if you don’t see colors as well, food might not bother or excite you as much visually (Laeng & Frøyen, 2024).
Food becomes more emotionally neutral. Food that is bright or strangely colored and might make someone with normal color vision pull back might not seem “wrong” to someone who doesn’t see the color difference as strongly. It’s like they are visually neutral—”I don’t see what the problem is” is actually what they see, not just something they say.
More importantly, this neutral feeling could reduce both strong desires (like wanting to eat desserts that look good) and strong dislikes. This could make people with color blindness more balanced eaters who are willing to try more things.
Inside the Brain: The Fusiform Gyrus and Color Processing
The fusiform gyrus is a part of the brain in the temporal lobe. It helps us with high-level visual tasks like recognizing faces, sorting objects, and, importantly, identifying food. It’s also connected to the emotional parts of the brain and usually reacts strongly to colorful images, especially food photos that are bright or very colorful.
Studies have shown that this part of the brain is active when people look at foods they like (or dislike). Color makes this reaction stronger. In people with color blindness, the information going to the fusiform gyrus is different. It’s not as strongly affected by colorful visuals.
This means the emotional feeling of “that food looks disgusting” (or delicious) might be weaker in people with color blindness. Because color doesn’t cause as much emotional reaction in their brains, they might judge food more by other senses like smell or taste. This can slow down the quick judgments that picky eaters often make.
Color Diversity and Food Uncertainty
Food neophobia is often not just about the food itself, but the feeling of uncertainty the food causes. Our brains are like danger detectors. They use even small clues to quickly decide if something is safe. Colors that we don’t expect (like purple cauliflower or black garlic) can look like warning signs to someone who is careful about food.
Here’s the important point: if you don’t notice these color differences to begin with, your warning system might not turn on. For people who are color blind, color changes don’t always seem “strange.” So, alarm bells related to food color just never ring.
This change in how they see things could mean they are less worried about unusual or new foods. They might be more likely to try new things instead of just eating “white foods” (like bread, pasta, chicken, and dairy) that picky eaters often prefer.
Evolution, Gender, and Visual Caution
Humans learned to avoid food that might be poisonous or unsafe by choosing food that looked “safe.” In nature, color has always been a sign of whether something is good or bad to eat.
Interestingly, research suggests that women and children tend to be more careful around food. This is probably because of evolution, as they needed to protect children from eating dangerous things. These groups also tend to be more food neophobic.
On the other hand, color blindness is more common in men. In the past, men’s roles didn’t require them to be as careful about checking food visually. So, there might be a mix of biology here: a less watchful visual system (color blindness) combined with less natural suspicion of food. This might make them more open to or at least not bothered by new foods.
Real-World Experiences
Many people who are color blind say they don’t really understand why other people think some foods look bad. They say they accept foods based on how they feel or taste, not how they look.
For example, some say they can’t understand why people dislike blue cheese, green smoothies, or cooked vegetables that are brownish. Because they don’t see changes in color that might suggest food is spoiled or strange as clearly, they don’t feel the same disgust as others.
While not studied a lot yet, these stories support the idea that seeing colors less strongly can lead to less food prejudice.
Can This Inform Therapy or Diet Strategies?
Because we are starting to see this link between color vision and food rejection, we can think about how to use this in helpful ways. This is especially true for therapy or programs to help picky eaters or people with ARFID (Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder).
Imagine if we could
- Gradually introduce new foods in places where colors are made less strong, so they are less visually shocking.
- Use virtual reality to create color-blind settings. This could help people separate color from feeling disgusted.
- Create apps or tools that make food color less important during therapy to try new foods.
These kinds of changes might help people who are very sensitive to color get over their food dislikes more easily. It could reduce their worry and help them feel more confident about trying new foods.
Sensory Processing and Eating Behavior
These ideas fit well with what we know about people who are very sensitive in many ways—like people with autism, or people who have general sensory processing problems.
For these people, how food feels and looks are the main reasons they might refuse food. But often, therapists don’t think about visual overload as a main problem. Too bright, too many colors, strange contrasts—these can all stop someone from wanting to eat before they even taste the food.
Better understanding of how visual surroundings affect eating habits lets doctors create kinder, more personalized ways to help.
Of Course, It’s Not Just About Color
Even with all this, we have to remember that color vision is not the only thing that makes someone a picky eater.
Many things affect food dislikes
- How sensitive they are to taste and flavor
- Bad experiences in the past (choking, food poisoning)
- Culture and habits
- How parents act and what friends do
- How food feels and how well they can use their mouth to eat
People who are not color blind can still be adventurous eaters, and people who are color blind can still be picky. But as just one part of the picture, color vision should get more attention in research and when designing therapies.
Practical Tools Inspired by This Research
Therapists, parents, and caregivers can use these ideas with simple, practical steps
- Try using black and white or less colorful filters when showing food pictures in therapy.
- Have meals in soft, warm lighting to make colors less sharp and contrasting.
- Don’t use colorful additives or artificial “fun” food colors when introducing new tastes.
- Watch if children are focused on how food feels, smells, or looks—and change your approach based on that.
- Serve food in simple ways, without colorful decorations or too much visual stimulation.
These small changes in the environment might make people less resistant to new foods and reduce quick rejections based on too much visual input.
Where Research Can Go Next
Future studies can really dig deeper into these connections. Good areas to study include
- Watching eye movements during food exposure in kids with and without color blindness.
- Using fMRI scans to map brain differences in color processing between picky and open eaters.
- Studying genes to see if there is a link between color vision traits and the risk of food neophobia.
- Using VR and AR with color filters in therapy for selective eating problems.
Working together across different fields—like brain science, psychology, dietetics, and sensory therapy—will be key to finding helpful treatments based on these early findings.
Seeing Food—and Eating It—Differently
How we see things doesn’t just shape what we see—it changes how we feel, and in the end, what we eat. For people with color blindness, food feelings might be softened because of a less reactive visual system. This could be a quiet benefit in overcoming eating problems linked to feeling disgusted or afraid of how food looks.
While color is not the only thing in eating behavior, it is a strong and often unnoticed factor. By thinking about and changing visual input—not just what food is on the plate, but what the brain sees—we might give new hope to picky eaters and those dealing with complex food dislikes.
Citations
- Laeng, B., & Frøyen, J. (2024). People with color blindness were found to report receiving less intense emotional responses to images of food and also had lower levels of food neophobia across surveyed populations.
- Spence, C. (2015). Multisensory flavor perception. Cell, 161(1), 24–35. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2015.03.007
