You may have asked yourself sometime. Why are not there blue foods, like blue apples ? Why have we never had the pleasure of eating blue strawberries or bananas of the same color? Nature gives us attractive fruits of intense red, orange, green or yellow, but never blue. Never blue fruits, although you think blueberries are ...
Nor do we find this coloration in the animal world in a manner we say, frequent. Some birds, no doubt, but very few. And it is possible that fish come to your head right now, but the effect of that blue color is basically due to the way light bounces off your scales, but when we cook them and put them on our plates, none of them has of an authentic and pure blue color.
Why is there no blue food?
Why are not there blue foods? Matter of chemistry
We have to make a small statement first: we often call it blue fruits to blueberries, certain grapes, plums, currants, blackberries ... but its color is slightly purple, approaching the violet. They do not have, as the children would say, an authentic "smurf color".
We could say, perhaps, that this color seems to be "almost" vetoed in vegetables. ¿ For what reason ? Well, we know that most plants have that green coloration 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 chemistry very, very alkaline. An unusual peculiarity, since most plants and animals have a slightly more acid metabolism.
Sometimes many plants that have blue flowers, end up turning pink or violet due to the usual acid soils from which they are nourished. It is an organic pigment, called anthocyanin , which causes, for example, our plants to turn red in a very acid medium, violet in a neutral and blue scenario if the soil is alkaline. A simple example: anthocyanin added to an acid medium will cause red roses. Antiocianina combined with an alkaline medium, will give you blue violets.
The shortage of blue pigments
There is a clear reality: the blue pigments are quite complex and scarce in our nature. Hence, do not abound, for example, the blue stones (most in the form of exclusive precious stones), we do not have "blue earth", nor are there too many animals with this color.
Some birds, without a doubt, and of great beauty, but not many, and if the sea animals have that slight blue coloration, it is mostly due to their skins, to which their scales scatter the light as iridescence. That is, it is not a pigment as such. We could say, then, that this tonality has not had too much Evolutionary success
We also have to take into account another interesting aspect, do the test to check it yourself. What you would eat before, a blue strawberry or an attractive red strawberry? It seems that at the evolutionary level we have also opted for red, yellow or green colors ... these fruits are always rich in vitamins, in antioxidants, in licópenos, etc. Before that for blue foods. The blue we normally leave for the field of confectionery, where we always use, of course, artificial colors.
Another reason why there could be so much shortage of natural blue foods is, according to Chris Gunter , professor of horticultural science at the State University of North Carolina, that blue is one of the colors with the highest wave energy in the visible light spectrum. So, to grow better and more efficiently, plants use light, and if they were blue, it would be because they are reflecting light more than using it to develop.
Another explanation about the lack of blue foods , especially in those of vegetal origin, points out that the plants in their evolution opted for red, for the contrast that created with the green of chlorophyll, present in all plants. The objective of many vegetables that have fruits is that the animals are able to distinguish their fruit or flower from their foliage, so that they consume them and spread their seeds in different places. So, if you are a plant and you want to generate a fruit or a flower, the ideal thing to stand out among your leaves is that it is red. Thus, blue may not have spread so much in nature because it was not the most effective in this sense, red won!
As a last curiosity about blue foods: there are chickens of the "araucana" breed that usually offer us striking and unique blue eggs . However, scientists tell us that this phenomenon is actually due to a retrovirus.
And now tell us, would you like to consume blue foods, do you see them as attractive?
If you liked this article, do not miss either the curious case of 100% black chickens.
Image: Alex Torres