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Subject: Children's Foods With Wacky Colors - HELP!
I know of a newspaper reporter who is currently writing a story about children's foods, including foods with wacky colors and flavors.
I offered our help in giving our honest opinions in the matter.
Being as how we have a great age diverstity in the forums, we can be of great help as consumers, as parents and as teens. :)
Some of the products that come to mind are:
Green Ketchup (Purple Is Also Available)
Trix Yogurt (Rainbow)
Pop Tarts (Blue and Purple)
Froot Loops (Continually Adding New Colors)
Fruity Pebbles (Continually Adding New Colors)
Motts Applesauce (Blue Raspberry And Green Colored)
In stating your opinion, please make sure to answer these questions:
1) What do you think about colors in foods?
2) Would you ever buy/Have you ever bought the products?
3) What promoted you to buy the products?
Thank you very much for your opinions. :)
Subject: Re: Children's Foods With Wacky Colors - HELP!
Quoting:
1) What do you think about colors in foods?End Quote
I like colors in foods, provided they are appropriate. There's some things that are pretty straight-forward, like how veggies are green and coke is dark. But I am deterred by funky colors unless they are popsicles or jello. Nobody wants to eat a snot-colored candy bar, because they expect it to be chocolate. Unless of course the consumer is a kid in the "gross-out" phase of development.
Quoting:
2) Would you ever buy/Have you ever bought the products?End Quote
Only popsicles ;) I like how they turn my tongue funky colors. I also like various colors of ICEE, because they are like tasty lipstick.
Quoting:
3) What promoted you to buy the products?
End Quote
I was hungry, and they looked good. Part of selling a product is presentation, and if they make a popsicle look yummy, be it color or shape, I'll buy it.
Subject: Re: Children's Foods With Wacky Colors - HELP!
Quoting:
I am deterred by funky colors unless they are popsicles or jello.End Quote
Thanks, RC! :)
Now....
We all expect popsicles and jello to be colorful and wacky.
Let's steer away from the these and focus on the unexpected.
Green ketchup, anyone?
Subject: Re: Children's Foods With Wacky Colors - HELP!
The one I have always love is when you ask a kid what flavor of sno-cone he/she wants, the answer is blue. Did you know that blue was a flavor?
Cat
Subject: Re: Children's Foods With Wacky Colors - HELP!
1. If it gets my kids to eat something that they normally wouldn't, I'm all for it. They are especially fond of the purple ketchup. I can't taste a difference, but they can.
2. I buy things that are colored on a weekly basis.
3. I did it to get my kids to try different foods. They are more concerned with how something looks than how it tastes. My sons wouldn't eat applesauce or drink alot of milk, so I used to use food coloring to change the color. Suddenly, green applesauce and blue milk was yummy. People thought I was crazy, but it worked.
I actually did this as my 8th grade science project. What I found is that the 'perception' of how something tastes is different when it doesn't look like it normally should. I used apple juice, which I colored red, green and black.I took a group of 50 students and had them each taste (once blindfolded, once not--in random order) each color. All but 1 of the participants said that there was a taste difference. (Red and green tasted better, black tasted worse) They did not know that they were drinking the same juice while blindfolded as when not.
Subject: Re: Children's Foods With Wacky Colors - HELP!
Quoting:
The one I have always love is when you ask a kid what flavor of sno-cone he/she wants, the answer is blue. Did you know that blue was a flavor?
Cat
End Quote
My kids will eat almost anything that is blue. Maybe I should try dieing some corn blue??? :)
Subject: Re: Children's Foods With Wacky Colors - HELP!
Quoting:
My kids will eat almost anything that is blue. Maybe I should try dieing some corn blue??? :)
End Quote
Sounds nasty to me but if those are the same kids who will eat purple ketchup-who am I to argue?
Cat
Subject: Re: Children's Foods With Wacky Colors - HELP!
Quoting:
Sounds nasty to me but if those are the same kids who will eat purple ketchup-who am I to argue?
Cat
End Quote
I agree, but these are the same kids who love the Secret Surprise Kool-aid that is strawberry flavored, but looks like snot. It turns my stomach every time I have to make it ;D
Subject: Re: Children's Foods With Wacky Colors - HELP!
Quoting:
I agree, but these are the same kids who love the Secret Surprise Kool-aid that is strawberry flavored, but looks like snot. It turns my stomach every time I have to make it ;D
End Quote
EWWWWWWW!!!!
Cat
Subject: Re: Children's Foods With Wacky Colors - HELP!
I think after a certain age kids stop going for the wacky colored foods. I actually never ate anything wacky colored, other than popsicles, because I had preconceptions of what foods were supposed to look like.
I think food companies cater to age 10-12 kids, who have crazy imaginations...I don't think there are too many adult-themed crazy color foods.
Maybe edible underwear. Yeah, there ya go!
Subject: Re: Children's Foods With Wacky Colors - HELP!
Quoting:
Maybe edible underwear. Yeah, there ya go!
End Quote
Taste great and less filling?
Cat
Subject: Re: Children's Foods With Wacky Colors - HELP!
Quoting:
Taste great and less filling?
End Quote
I'm sorry, but that was the greatest commercial of all time :D ;D
Subject: Re: Children's Foods With Wacky Colors - HELP!
On the other hand... If you are using that product to make the food more attractive, and therefore, desirable to the child just to get him to eat it, then you have relinquished control to your kid. But something like ketchup, which is only a condiment/complement, I see no harm in making it fun with purple or green colours. When it comes to cereal and Pop-Tarts, they have always been colourful so I see no drastic change in the formula. Fruit IS colourful, after all. {Although I have to say that 'Lucky Charms' contains more marshmallows than cereal now. ::)}
Subject: Re: Children's Foods With Wacky Colors - HELP!
I do not eat foods which have outrageous colors. I like my food to have normal colors. I can understand that kids like to have visual stimulation, and since they tell mom/dad what they like, companies try to make appealing food for them.
I guess it is not different than some grown up meals where they add garnishes, like adding parsly to pork chops to show green color. But these colors are natural.
Chances are if they are adding color to a food, then they are masking something unapealing, and trying to think what that is takes my appitite away.
Subject: Re: Children's Foods With Wacky Colors - HELP!
Quoting:
Maybe edible underwear. Yeah, there ya go!
End Quote
Yeah baby, yeah! And make it sticky, like a jam (just not the darker colored ones).
Subject: Re: Children's Foods With Wacky Colors - HELP!
Purple Ketchup? Heck No! :P
I'd rather have Red Ketchup.
And who thought of the idea of turning mustard green ???
I had it one time on a frankfurter and it wasn't that half bad.
It was pretty good :)
Howard
Subject: Re: Children's Foods With Wacky Colors - HELP!
My sister has bought the Purple katchup several times for her kids and i have tried it and it takes exactly like the regular ketchup so i dont have any problem with it at all. Well atleast not with the Purple katchup though they could have picked a better color than purple but oh well.
Subject: Re: Children's Foods With Wacky Colors - HELP!
Well Hairspray, since I'm a non-child rearing type I can only speak for myself.
Food colors are ok as long as they match what the food or beverage is supposed to be. Pepsi dark brownish color- OK, pepsi clear- WRONG!
I haven't bought because of coloring that I know of, I certainly like fruity pebbles and the like as a kid, but those colors were there to represent the fruit flavors.
Promoted to by the products was flavor, colors were there but appropriate for the product.
Subject: Re: Children's Foods With Wacky Colors - HELP!
After looking through the kid-food in the house, I have observed we have both the green and the purple ketchup. The children love it, and won't use the "normal" ketchup. We also have green colored pudding (that is actually vanilla) and red and blue applesauce. And, like Cheerleader, my children will eat any food that is blue. ;D Especially slushes. We have to order the "blue"flavored slushes at sonic, so I guess blue is a flavor for my children, Cat. ;) Of course we have all of the standard pop tarts, cereals etc that are different colors.
Subject: Re: Children's Foods With Wacky Colors - HELP!
Quoting:
1) What do you think about colors in foods?End Quote
I can only answer as an adult who doesn't buy food for children. I would never buy green ketchup. Not because of I'd worry about the taste, but because I don't care for food dyes. Granted, I imagine that red ketchup has dye in it too, but probably not as much... it hasn't been as altered... as the green ketchup.
To digress a little, margarine used to be white. Up through WWII it was sold with coloring packets that would make it look buttery yellow.
Quoting:2) Would you ever buy/Have you ever bought the products?End Quote
Never bought them. Might buy them if they were heavily discounted, but I'm a cheapskate.
Quoting:3) What promoted you to buy the products? End Quote
N/A
Subject: Re: Children's Foods With Wacky Colors - HELP!
During the Reagan adminstration, someone decided that ketchup was a vegetable in school lunches. Go figure! :-/
Cat
Subject: Re: Children's Foods With Wacky Colors - HELP!
Quoting:
During the Reagan adminstration, someone decided that ketchup was a vegetable in school lunches. Go figure! :-/
Cat
End Quote
If that's the case, then my kids DO eat their daily allowance of vegetables!!! :D
Subject: Re: Children's Foods With Wacky Colors - HELP!
Quoting:
1) What do you think about colors in foods?End Quote
I think it's mostly a marketing tool. It's no more or less harmful/harmless than all the other additives in processed foods today. And if it will help get a finicky kid to eat healthier (colored ketchup or margarine on veggies, or colored applesauce instead of a candy bar) then go for it.
Quoting:2) Would you ever buy/Have you ever bought the products?End Quote
I've tried the colored pop-tarts, but my daughter and I both could taste that they were supposed to be something in the berry family. We prefer the brown sugar ones. ;) The colored yougurt works well, here. My daughter won't eat "normal" yogurt, but I think that has more to do with the cartoon characters associated with the brand than the colors.
Green ketchup was a disaster in our house. My daughter was all for it the first two times we used it. Then she decided she could taste the difference, and won't touch it at all. I'm reduced to trying to use it up myself, by squirting a little into pasta sauces, or using it while eating in the dark (watching a movie for instance). It tastes EXACTLY the same as red ketchup to me, but I just can't look at it.
Quoting:3) What promoted you to buy the products? End Quote
When they first started showing the ads on tv for colored ketchup my daughter said, "Cool!". When we saw it in the store I asked her if she wanted me to buy the green stuff and she said yeah. As you can see, it didn't work. As to the colored yogurt, and cereals, that has to to with the cartoon character on the package, and the toy or sticker that comes with the food.
These days we are sticking to food that comes in it's "original" color.
Subject: Re: Children's Foods With Wacky Colors - HELP!
Quoting:
Green ketchup was a disaster in our house. My daughter was all for it the first two times we used it. Then she decided she could taste the difference, and won't touch it at all. I'm reduced to trying to use it up myself, by squirting a little into pasta sauces, or using it while eating in the dark (watching a movie for instance). It tastes EXACTLY the same as red ketchup to me, but I just can't look at it.End Quote
This is funny to me because I cannot eat that purple and green stuff, not even in the dark. I swear I can taste a difference, lol. ;D I am sure it is all in my head, but I just can't do it. Thank goodness the kids eat it because I wouldn't.
Subject: Re: Children's Foods With Wacky Colors - HELP!
Quoting:
After looking through the kid-food in the house, I have observed we have both the green and the purple ketchup. The children love it, and won't use the "normal" ketchup. We also have green colored pudding (that is actually vanilla) and red and blue applesauce. And, like Cheerleader, my children will eat any food that is blue. ;D Especially slushes. We have to order the "blue"flavored slushes at sonic, so I guess blue is a flavor for my children, Cat. ;) Of course we have all of the standard pop tarts, cereals etc that are different colors.
End Quote
You have a Sonic near you? I keep seeing the comercials and the food looks really good. I can not find one near me at all. Those burgers and shakes look sooooo good! How good are they? Are they better than McDonalds?
Subject: Re: Children's Foods With Wacky Colors - HELP!
Here in the U.k we have purple,green and orange ketchup.One supermarket chain also tried to get kids to eat more veg by flavouring it like chocolate and caramel etc.As you can imagine it failed dismally.We still have a tin of chocolate baked beans in the cupboard Ian bought to try and then never could quite bring himself to open! :P
Subject: Re: Children's Foods With Wacky Colors - HELP!
I've never bought foods with wacky colors. If I had children and it got them to eat certain foods I would certainly buy it, especially if it was good for them.
Subject: Re: Children's Foods With Wacky Colors - HELP!
myself i do not care what color it is as long as it tastes good . but all those examples that u said like the trix yougort yeah i had to buy that cause the kid wanted it saw it on tv. all those colors are for them to get kids to want it and then it sticks the parent to pay more cause its the same thing as before but just a different color.
Subject: Re: Children's Foods With Wacky Colors - HELP!
In stating your opinion, please make sure to answer these questions:
1) What do you think about colors in foods?
I think anything to make food more exciting and unique is a good gimmick....plus alot of kids do like something 'different' and can pretend about what they are eating
2) Would you ever buy/Have you ever bought the products?
I have bought the purple ketchup. It tastes the same and puts a twist on serving fries. Plus I have had orange colored pudding...I think they are called Dino-Cups. A friend of mine gives them to her kids....they are vanilla flavored
3) What promoted you to buy the products?
Just to have something new in the fridge. Not the same ol, same ol. Kinda going against the norm
Subject: Re: Children's Foods With Wacky Colors - HELP!
1) What do you think about colors in foods?
it really doesn't bother me. now, the odd flavored foods, on the other hand...the thought of cinnamon french fries makes me ill. who the hell would do that to a perfectly good french fry?! it's just wrong!
2) Would you ever buy/Have you ever bought the products?
we had some green ketchup in the house a while back...it was fun, but no one in my family saw fit to buy it again.
3) What promoted you to buy the products?
green's my favorite color! lmao.