How Can Food Appearance Affect Appetite?

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Often, you judge food from its appearance. Food with an attractive appearance certainly makes many people want to eat it. Conversely, food with a bad appearance makes people not want to eat it, even just seeing it is not tasteful. Then, how does food appearance affect your appetite?

The sense of sight plays an important role in your appetite

Your appetite is influenced by your five senses, one of which is the eye. The first time you see food, you can already imagine the delicacy of the food, which in turn can affect your appetite. Not infrequently when you see food with an attractive appearance, you say, "surely the food is delicious!"

This means that the perception of food is formed when you first see food. When you are faced with food, what works first is your eye before you take the food and eat it. At this time, your eyes send signals to the brain before your taste buds feel the taste of the food. So, before eating (just by looking at food), you can already 'taste' the taste of the food you are about to eat.

Your perception of food is inseparable from your experience of food from childhood. Your way of looking at the appearance of good and bad food is formed from a small age. Appearance of food can influence how you expect the delicacy of the food and what your true sensory experience is with that food.

Food color can change your appetite

Food appearance can not be separated from the color of the food. Did you know, food color can affect your appetite? If the color of the food does not meet your expectations, you might think the food has a different taste, so you are not appetite to eat it.

Food color can also affect your perception of food. From childhood, we are used to being faced with delicious foods that have certain colors. So, we begin to associate certain colors with various types of food. This unconsciously shapes our perception of good food.

A study that looked at the impact of color on the level of freshness of the drink proved that clear colored drinks (water colors) were considered the most refreshing. This may be influenced by the fact that we already know and know the freshness of water for a long time.

Another example, you are used to connecting colors with the level of maturity or freshness of fruits and vegetables. Usually, the color brown is related to fruits and vegetables that have rotten.

Food color can be an attraction

Because of the strong relationship between food color and the perception of many people about the taste of food, many companies use this method to attract their customers.

Some examples of the relationship of color to the perception of food are:

Color red related to sweetness
Color blue can make someone lose their appetite because we are not used to seeing food in blue
Color green very closely related to healthy food. Many people tend to think that green foods are healthy. This is probably because from childhood we are used to being told that vegetables are healthy and usually green.
Color white tends to make someone overeat, especially in the form of snacks (like popcorn).
Color yellow can increase your appetite. However, the color yellow is also commonly associated with sourness.