Research shows that people with color vision deficiencies are less picky
The 'color' of food helps us to distinguish whether the food is ripe or rotten. It is also known that people tend to prefer meals with colorful foods, but some people with color vision deficiency have difficulty distinguishing the colors of these foods. Research on people with color vision deficiency has revealed that these people are less picky about food.
How we discovered that people who are colorblind are less likely to be picky eaters
Human abilities vary from person to person, and while some people can distinguish a wide variety of colors, others cannot recognize many colors. Similarly, some people are good at distinguishing between different types of food, and this can lead to large differences in strengths and weaknesses, just as some people are good at distinguishing between people's faces.
Psychologist Isabelle Gautier has been studying this ability to discern, finding that people have different abilities to recognize objects by having them choose the same dish from photos of similar dishes or choose a different dish from others. In this experiment, it was found that people with a higher ability to recognize general objects also had a higher ability to recognize food, but it was found that there was a slight difference in the ability to recognize general objects and food, which led to the theory that humans may have a special power only when recognizing food.
Gautier speculates that this may simply be down to 'human attitudes' such as likes and dislikes and preferences regarding food, and he says that his experiments have actually shown that 'people have a fear of eating food they've never tried before called 'food neophobia' - put simply, the more picky they are, the poorer their ability to recognize food.'
Other researchers have also investigated similar questions and have been able to identify brain regions in the visual system that respond preferentially to food -- for example, a bowl of pasta activates this brain region, but not a pile of string -- that are also known to respond to color.
Researchers have been divided on the fact that the color-sensitive areas also respond to food. Some researchers have proposed that this area responds to color because it is specialized for recognizing food, while others have argued that color is not important for the brain's response to food. Researchers who make the latter claim cite the fact that the area was activated when black and white photos of food were shown.
Using these discussions as a guide, Gautier improved on his original experiment by changing the photographs from color to black and white. As expected, this resulted in more people making incorrect choices and confusing different dishes as the same type of food.
However, this experiment revealed a surprising finding. The previous experiment had revealed that the more picky the eater, the lower their ability to recognize food. However, in this experiment, in which the photos were black and white, there was no correlation between picky eating and food recognition ability.
From these results, Gautier speculated that 'people with color vision deficiency may be less picky eaters.' To confirm this prediction, he conducted a survey in which color-blind people were asked to answer food likes and dislikes. Note that, since there are 16 times as many color-blind men as women, only men's results were picked up in this survey.
The researchers found that color-blind men were less likely to have food neophobia than men without color vision deficiency, a finding that was replicated in another study, which also found that color-blind men also had lower levels of food preferences.
'As researchers learn more about the complex relationship between color perception and food, they may be able to develop better strategies to improve eating habits,' said Gautier. 'Also, understanding and harnessing the power of color may help us to enjoy food more.'
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