For thousands of years mankind was unable to recognize the color blue, due to it appearing
so rarely in nature.
On the grasslands of Savannah, the plains of Europe, and the steppes of Asia, the color
blue appears extremely infrequently amongst natural fauna or wildlife, and because we
evolved to identify edible plants and animals, our brains ignored the color blue in the few
places it did appear.
For an untold amount of time, humans were simply oblivious to the color blue, and ancient
writers such as the Greek even referred to the ocean as 'wine-tinted purple', rather
than the beautiful blue of the Mediterranean Sea.
This inability to see blue still occurs in a few isolated African tribes that live on
the savannah, and when shown the color blue on a color wheel they are completely unable
to identify it since their brains don't have the 'idea' of blue wired in.
Yet they are able to identify dozens of different shades of yellow that we ourselves are blind
to.
It's a crazy, mixed-up world of color out there, and while seeing- or not seeing- blue
is fine and dandy, what about eating it?
Once more we turn to your favorite experimental guinea pig, which after the dozens of comments
we're forced to publicly state is a term of endearment- just don't tell him that, if he
feels more important to the show he's going to start demanding higher pay.
Now, stay tuned as we challenge him to eat only blue foods for 72 hours because our brainstormers
were really bore- I mean, for scientific reasons!
Day 1: Well, this should make for interesting poop- was the very first thought that popped
into my head upon reading my next assignment from The Infographics Show.
The very next thought was, where the hell do I buy blue food?
What blue foods even exist?
I guess it's a good thing they provided a healthy shopping stipend for this episode.
I did some research online and it turns out that there are some naturally occurring blue
food items, though definitely not very many.
Blueberries immediately spring to mind, and it's a good thing I happen to like blueberries,
because I'm going to be eating a lot of them.
There's also apparently a fish called the lingcod that is naturally blue, though it
can be hard to find.
Shouldn't be an issue for a city as big as Los Angeles though to score one of these fish,
although I am not looking forward to it, because outside of survival challenges I really don't
like eating fish at all... it's all, well, fishy.
I believe it was the great, and underrated, comedian Jim Gaffigan who joked, “How can
you tell when a fish has gone bad?
It smells like fish!”
I did find a ton of recipes to just turn your food blue, but that sounds like cheating so
I won't be doing that.
From my research though it does kind of look like I'm going to be pretty restricted to
what I can actually eat.
There's blue potatoes, which apparently have an earthier taste than regular potatoes.
I guess people don't like their potatoes looking kind of gross blue and so they're not very
popular, but they do exist.
Then there's also blue carrots, which by the way is the color all carrots used to be until
the dutch decided to grow only orange carrots in support of William of Orange- and the new
look kind of just stuck.
Yes we did do an episode on this, why carrots are orange, because we do episodes on everything,
including apparently eating only blue foods.
There is also blue corn, which was popular with Native Americans until betraying and
killing Native Americans became itself popular with Europeans.
You are still able to find blue corn though, because mankind loves novelty enough to keep
certain species from going extinct- sorry rhinos, we love money more than you.
There are also bilberries which I feel is sort of cheating but is apparently a European
cousin of the blueberry, luckily once more I'm in a major city so finding them shouldn't
be a problem.
Concord grapes are apparently considered blue, although to me they look more purple- but
you know what, if they're going to increase my food variety I'll take it because right
now it's looking like fish and berries for three days straight.
And um, that's honestly kind of it.
At least foods that wouldn't require being flown in from the most remote parts of the
world.
These things are so niche, like a certain kind of mushroom that grows in only a certain
part of Japan, that they cost an arm and a leg.
If I presented an expense report for a crate of these things to Infographics I'm pretty
sure someone there would have an immediate heart attack.
Ok, well it's time to go shopping.
I'll see you guys tomorrow.
Day 2: Alright, so I said that I would stay away from food dyes, but I never said that
I wouldn't eat foods that had been pre-dyed.
After all I could simply buy some food dye and marinate a big juicy t-bone steak in it.
Also, sorry but it turns out there's like so few naturally blue foods that all I would
end up eating really is fish and berries, and I'm not a grizzly bear putting on fat
for the winter.
I need variety.
So I went shopping yesterday, and I should call it hunting more than shopping.
I had to cover at least half of this city to find blue potatoes, bilberries, blue carrots,
and lingcod.
Which by the way, I was unable to find filleted and had to actually buy a whole fish.
Try and imagine how well that went down with the girlfriend when she came home and found
a twenty pound three-foot long fish sitting on the counter, oh and fish guts were everywhere
because I'd been trying to filet the damn thing for fifteen minutes before she got there.
Also, apparently not all lingcod actually have blue flesh, but I got lucky and mine
had... well not truly blue flesh, but I guess more blue-greenish.
Their guts are about as red as any other fish's though, and the girlfriend made me swear to
disinfect the entire kitchen when I was done.
Also we're temporarily not on speaking terms because I chased her out of the house with
a handful of fish guts.
So fish has been on the menu, which I prepared alongside some of the blue carrots.
Honestly, the fish tastes like fish and other than being a bit earthier and maybe tangier
than normal carrots, the blue carrots tasted exactly like normal carrots.
What an earth-shattering discovery, glad Infographics insisted on confusing my digestive system
for three days with this silly challenge.
I did have a helping of pudding that happened to be colored blue.
Listen, I know that milk, eggs, and... well to be honest I don't know what goes into making
pudding, but I know those things aren't naturally blue- but like I said, it's not my fault that
nobody at the show specified I had to eat naturally blue foods only.
Also, fish is terrible, and pudding makes me happy, which is a feeling I need after
eating blue-green fish for two days.
The color doesn't help with the smell and the idea that you can't really tell when fish
has gone bad, but when you cook the flesh the color goes away and it's just normal white.
That's kind of disappointing to be honest, I thought it'd at least be fun to eat blue
fish flesh.
I guess I could make it into sashimi but literally ever blog and website I found on the matter
said do not risk this, the lingcod is apparently not a great fish for sushi or sashimi because
of parasites.
Parasites which I realized were simply being cooked to death, and then I would eat.
Extra protein I guess, but yet another reason to never eat fish if you can help it.
Day 3: It is really, really hard to eat only blue foods.
I mean you can find plenty of artificially colored blue junk foods in the supermarket,
but if you don't want to gain thirty pounds overnight, which I don't, then trying to eat
even remotely normal, and eat only blue foods is a hell of a task.
I couldn't stomach fish anymore so instead I switched to potatoes, carrots, bilberries
and blueberries.
The blueberries and bilberries I made into jam by smushing them, adding some sugar and
corn syrup, and letting it sit overnight.
In the morning it made for a pretty delicious breakfast, and even the girlfriend enjoyed
it- until I told her that I also put the blue fish in it.
She looked like she was going to vomit on the spot until I told her I was only joking,
but given the very weird nature of my challenges, I'm not sure she believed me completely.
She's thus decreed that from now on whenever I'm doing a, quote, “stupid challenge”,
end quote, our food is going to be strictly segregated.
The bilberries taste more tart to me than blueberries, and they are definitely not my
favorite.
Probably explains why they're not as popular as their blueberry cousins.
Can't say they were very noticeable on their own when made into jam though, but if you
eat them individually you can definitely taste it.
For lunch I made myself a giant heaping serving of blue french fries.
Now, if you're a fan of our challenge series then you know that I'm myself a huge fan of
french fries, but to be honest blue french fries are just... gross.
They taste completely normal, but you just can't get it out of your head as you're eating
them how unnatural they seem.
I guess we associate the color blue with colors of rot and decay, it's the color of a rotting
corpse after all, and so it can be hard to swallow blue foods that aren't things like
berries.
Even the oven-baked blue carrots I had for dinner, alongside more stupid blue fish, were
hard to eat.
It turns out that color really does affect our appetite and our feelings about what we
eat, which is why I guess we prefer brightly colored food items.
They just seem healthier to our brain because they don't have the same colors that rotting
food does, and trying to swallow a bunch of blue fries down without thinking about them
being rotten and disgusting is pretty difficult.
I honestly think that this is the only observation I have from this whole three day experiment,
along with the fact that I don't think I want to touch fish again for a few months, because
out of all the food all across the earth, fish really is just the worst.
Unless it's made into sushi.
And that's weird, right?
I'd rather eat raw fish rather than cooked fish, which I find disgusting.
Welcome to my topsy-turvy life.
So, should you eat only blue foods?
Definitely not.
The diet is pretty restrictive, and you’re mostly going to be left with boring old fish,
like two vegetables and two types of fruits.
I guess if you went ahead and cheated with blue-colored food that’s manmade you might
be able to get away with it for a while, then you can include all kinds of pudding, yogurt,
and jello to the mix, along with various types of cake- although fair warning, blue-colored
cakes are typically gross.
Not that the cake itself is gross, because it’s just colored bread really, but for
some reason blue colored cakes are always topped with weird things like fruits or jelly
beans.
The biggest risk from eating blue only foods though is the lack of nutritionary variety.
If you’re a subscriber to our show- and really, why wouldn’t you be?- then you probably
saw our episode on the British kid who lost his eyesight from eating nothing but junk
food.
Go check it out, it’s called Teen is Blinded By Junk Food.
Whether you saw it then or are going to watch it now, you’ll know or about to find out
that overly restrictive diets can seriously harm you over a long course of time.
Limiting yourself to only blue foods will eventually starve your body of much-needed
nutrients and minerals, and much like our British kid in the junk food episode, you
can suffer serious harm to include loss of vision and even deafness.
So I’m going to go back to my normal life of eating a rainbow of regular foods, though
I’ll have to work through the four twelve-packs of blue pudding I bought because I desperately
needed something other than fish and fruit.
As you might have learned by now watching these challenge episodes, impulse control
is not my strong point.
If you had to eat one color for three days which color would you pick?
Tell us in the comments, and then go watch “Why Carrots Are Orange” and learn why
carrots aren't blue anymore!
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