Dark chocolate wrappers lead consumers to think sweets will taste more bitter, while yellow and pink create expectations of sweetness, according to a study.
Researchers in Brazil asked 420 people to predict the taste qualities of dark and milk chocolate chunks that came in different colored packages. They also discovered that the bundle black it made people expect to enjoy milk chocolate more, but the opposite was true of dark chocolate.
How do the colors of the packaging affect chocolate?
The study was carried out by food scientist Iuri Baptista from the University of Campinas, São Paulo, and his colleagues. «Research has shown that not only the color of the product itself, but also the colors of the tableware, the bundle and the environment can influence the expectations and perception of a food or drinkthe team wrote in their article.
«This happens because when consumers see a product, such as a barritUpon chocolate, their brains immediately search for clues that match previous experiences and try to anticipate what it is and what its characteristics are. This process creates expectations that have been shown to affect behavioral response, sensory perception, and neural activation.«.
To investigate how this phenomenon alters our expectations for chocolates, Baptista and his colleagues surveyed 420 people between the ages of 18 and 60, half of whom resided in Brazil, while the rest came from France.
Each participant was shown a photograph of two milk chocolate bars and two dark chocolate bars, each of which came in a package of a specific color: black, blue, brown, green, red, pink, or yellow. They were then asked to rate various anticipated attributes of the chocolate, including how bitter or sweet it was expected to be, on a nine-point scale.
On average, respondents said they expected dark and milk chocolates to be the most bitter and least sweet when packaged black. In contrast, of the seven colors tested, the yellow and the pink led people to expect chocolates to taste sweeter and less bitter.
Milk chocolate tastes better in black packaging
Interestingly, the researchers also found that people I like milk chocolate better if it comes in a black packagebut with the version negra, the same color of wrapper had the exact opposite effect.
No real difference was found between subjects from Brazil and France, a finding that surprised the team, given the country's different chocolate habits, with the average Frenchman who eats more than twice as much favoring a higher cocoa content.
With their initial study complete, the researchers now plan to investigate whether wrapping chocolates in different colored packaging also affects how this sweet is perceived, rather than expected, in taste. «Effects of context color on food need to be further investigatedthe research team wrote.
This will allow us to understand how industries, artisans, chefs, baristas, mixologists, packaging designers, food bloggers and photographers can use it to influence consumer expectations about their products and services.
The full findings of the study were published in the International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science.