Last night at dinner I was devouring some blue Jell-o and thinking there aren’t many blue foods. In fact, we could think of only one naturally occuring blue food – blueberries. Blue cheese is kinda blue, but that’s the mold not the cheese. Are there any more? Why does food come naturally in every color except blue? Clearly there must be a government conspiracy in here somewhere.
Blue corn? Blue curacao (liqueur), blue crab? 🙂
George Carlin does a bit on this, see http://snltranscripts.jt.org/75/75acarlin2.phtml
dead man’s fingers is a plant with natural blue ‘fruit pods’ that can be eaten.
Hey, acctually..blueberries are kinda purple…My friend and i are trying to discover blue food..can’t think of any yet though…if we do, i’ll keep you updated.
I had a college prof ask this question to a class 17 yrs ago. We said blueberries – he said purple. We said blue crabs – but then when you cook them they turn orange. We could not come up with a natural blue food.
My husband is obsessed with planning a blue food meal and it all centers around Peruvian Blue potatoes that we buy at a local farm. They are more purplish than blue but we still call them blue.
I attend culinary school and our chef asked this question in class and is giving extra credit to anyone who can come up with a naturally blue food. I have a few ideas such as coronation grapes, which are a blue black color. other than that my chef and i are stumped. please help me get extra credit!!!!! lol thanks
Wow i love blue food! yummy!!!
My boss asked me this question…
certain edible flowers are blue
i must find the answer!!!
Bilberry is the only blue food stuff that I know of. Even a trivial pursuit question said it was the only blue food. Not sure how true that is of course. But bilberry is offcially blue. Blueberry is purple.
Blue corn and blueberries are the ones I can think of that are actually blue. I do disagree that ALL blueberries are purple… I have definitely seen blue ones.
I’m trying to work into eating a colorful diet and blue is just hard to come by. 🙁
i heard that toucan meat is naturally blue!
I heard that blue smarties are coloured by the Blue Curango, a naturally occuring pepper like plant, known for its aphrodisiac qualities. Does this mean kids will be running around horny?
On world of Warcraft Bob Carolgees once told me that I could grow blue movies. He lied, I cried
There is a rare edible mushroom that is blue. It is the only naturally occurring food I know that is truly blue. These mushrooms have a texture similar to lobster mushrooms and are light/medium blue in color.
Hate to tell you all, but, purple IS blue. red + blue = purple. Blue corn, blueberries, bleu cheese, blue potatoes, blue liquor. Purple subset = grapes, eggplant, etc. Manipulated subset = red cabbage chemically altered with soda, dye additives such as jello, m/m’s, sodas and sports drinks. Non-blue food such as blue crab, blue tuna. ALL these would make a fun party, but please leave out the blue eggs.
Cynthia is a liar, I don’t even think there is such a colour as blue, or even such a name as Cynthia
Bob Carolgees told me that she was evil
I’m with Bob on this one!
got it guys, i found the only blue food in the world.
smurf meat.
Can you get meat off a Smurf?
I thought they were all gristly
Once Osama Bin Martin Walker told me never to trust a man with numbers in his name. Kenny313, I stand by his vision of the future. Are you a cyborg?
Hate to tell you, Cynthia, but by your logic green IS blue too. Yellow + blue = green.
But that doesn’t make any sense.
Hi,
I think that Cynthia is a liar, purple isn’t even a proper colour anyway just one made up by the colourblind to get one over on the “rainbow see-ers!”
There is only one blue food and it lives in my house
There is NO naturally occurring blue food. Blueberries and Blue Corn are definitely NOT blue – they’re both deep purple. If you don’t believe me, go get yourself a color wheel and compare.
And no, purple is definitely not blue. By that logic my front lawn is blue too (Yellow + Blue = Green).
If I get myself really cold I can make blue lips which I eat with my face.
there are Blue Lobsters, look it up I was amazed
I DONT CARE IF THE FOOD IS BLUE OR BLUEISH-PURPLE! JUST NAME THE FOOD
There are several potato kinds that are blue. The kind known as Blue Almond is only blue/purple on the outside and white on the inside, but can be used to make light purple mashed potatoes. There are other kinds that are blue through and through but I don’t know their names.
Here is a photo of Blue Almond:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3290/2836697003_ebc8cab998.jpg
Robin’s eggs are blue-edible to a point, I guess. Although not inside; however we do say brown eggs even though they are not brown inside. I am looking for a natual blue food as well for a chile recipe and purple/maroon is as close as I can get.
Found it. Poppy Seeds. “They’re a deep blue and when cooked in milk turn the milk a beautiful shade of purple.” http://www.woodlandfoods.com. I work in the food ingredient industry and this question was driving me insane. Not that anyone is going to read it since the original post was in 2005….
I am reading it…I am from the future. 2015. 🙂
Blueberries are actually purple.
There is no such thing as naturally blue foods.
If blueberries are purple, where does the purple come from? Purple is a blend of red and blue so blue has to be a food color. Wild blueberries are by definition not man made but wild so they cannot be purple since purple is a blend
cshel, I read your post. I want to have a blue-themed luncheon and it has never occured to me until now about there not being many blue foods.
Borage flowers are edible and they are blue.
If a naturally occurring food is to be BLUE, it must be BLUE and not a combination thereof.. so BLUE berries, BLUE corn are PURPLE. Even if it takes BLUE to make PURPLE, it also takes RED to do so! BLEU Cheese is NOT naturally occurring.
Flowers don’t count! Most people eat Fauna, not Flora!
i need to know this for a 30point homework assighment. we have to tell something about our family tha is the same and all of our eyes are blue. PLEASE HELP!
BTW:7th grade
If it helps anyone, I believe that the reason there are so few blue foods is that blue light is much more useful to plants than other colours. It is better that they absorb it, so they evolved not to reflect it.
Since very few naturally occurring foods are blue, we also have very few artificial foods that are, because we don’t associate blue with food and food producers assume that it would be off-putting.
Note that these are just my theories. I welcome any better suggestions!
i think u r all wrong and u dont have to put certain colors with certain foods…BLUEBERRIES CAN BE PURPLE OR BLUE NO ONE REALLY CARES!!! just eat your blueberries and be happy with them!!!
I’m planning an all blue meal for a friends birthday. I’ve stretched the breif to blue/purple.
I’ll let you know how it goes!
There will be blue cocktails so maybe guests won’t mind the lavender cheese cake with cornflowers in the mix will be white with blue bits
Okay people who keep saying that blueberries have have to have blue because red+blue=purple, you are taking that rule or art way too literally.
What makes something a certain color is it’s ability to reflect a certain color of light and absorb the rest. So something purple reflects purple light, which is a color on it’s own because it is a color of the visible light spectrum. It absorbs both red and blue light, just like grass absorbs both yellow and blue light and refelcts green.
I don’t know the answer to the question, but I have always heard that there are no foods that are naturally blue, and I mean foods, not something that may be edible but people don’t eat. There could be, but think about it and if there is most people don’t eat it often.
Oh, and yes, lobsters can appear blue but they turn red when you cook them in order to make them food and not an animal and we are not talking about naturally blue animals.
I believe that Delaware or Maryland has a blue crab that is edible? It is found in the Chesapeake Bay and served at a restaurant named Mikes Crab House.
Check that off the list of tihgns I was confused about.
There no naturally occurring blue foods. Blueberries may have a blue skin, but they are purple on the inside. Blue cheese is a mold. Blue corn chips have had dye artificially induced into them. The same with skittles, M&Ms, cereal, powdered drinks, most other foods that appear blue. Dead man’s fingers are edible but they are not considered as part of a food group. There are several other flowers that are blue, but also again, not of a food group. So any food that appears as blue, you can be assured has been dyed.
I originally saw this point made by original BBC Documentary ‘Connections’ (1979) host and Author: scientist James Burke. Blue and bilberry and Concord grape skins may appear blue, but once you rub the ‘blush’ from their skins, their true colour shows through. Edible flowers certainly are an enspired inclusion, that would probably earn points in cooking class, but inclusion as a natural ‘foodsource’ is reaching a bit, as it would be difficult if not impossible to keep from starving if one had to rely on them for sustanence. There certainly are chemical ways of turning the anthocyanins in purple foods more blue in their preperation, but as most of them are rather fragile in heat, and the definition is ‘naturally occuring’; that also goes farther towards proving rather than disproving this rule. Most ‘so-called’ blue foods naturally occurring in the world are rather naturally purple as is the case with blue corn and blueberries, or greenish-torquoise like the veins in blue cheese.
For those doing ‘extra credit’ papers or working on cookery classes, they might wish to point out that borage (which if you cannot find fresh in the store or garden center, you might try growing from seed packets readily available, as it is a sturdy little garden plant, with flowers that taste of cucumber [no really!] has been in use since the Roman times.
http://www.wildflowerfinder.org.uk/Flowers/B/Borage/Borage.htm
Blue corn chips should be made from blue corn. I see no reason to introduce dye.
http://hila.webcentre.ca/research/teosinte/
And that corn looks pretty blue to me, but then the finer shades of the color spectrum are often debatable.
My health teacher will not eat anything that is blue. He wont eat blue candy, or blue Jello, absolutely nothing blue. He says the reason is because there is no naturally occuring food in nature that is blue. Except fish but he is allergic which is just perfect :(. I could really use some help with the blue food thing!!
Blueberries skin is indigo and inside vary clearly purple. As many sakd their are some blue flowers. Most so called blue foods and all we find at grocery store are more purplethen blue and if truly blue are dyed to be blue. Fish and shellfish meat are either white or pink soouter ccolor means nothing it just is what is.
Blueberries are actually kind of purple. And the inside is white/clear