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Color counts, but not in ketchup or cookiesBy JANET K. KEELER
© St. Petersburg Times,
A year ago, Heinz, the giant food conglomerate, introduced its EZ Squirt Blastin' Green ketchup to the giddy glee of kids looking for more ways to spend their parents' money. About 10-million bottles sold in the first seven months, boosting Heinz's already huge share of the market. Not since New Coke faced off against Classic Coke in the mid 1980s did the media bite so hard on a food story. From CNN to Entertainment Weekly, green ketchup was red hot. Responding to "demands" of kids, Heinz says, the company is adding a third color of ketchup to the shelves. Heinz will only say that the color-enhanced condiment will be orange, purple, hot pink or yellow. It's a big secret until late August, when the new ketchup hits the market, or until the media buzz gears up. (I'm guessing purple.) Some food manufacturers will do anything to get their products noticed. It's not enough for a product to be aligned with a cartoon character, a professional athlete or a movie. Everybody is doing that. These days it takes more than a Rugrat peering from the box to sell fruit roll-ups. It takes a gimmick, and today's gimmick is color. Even new diet books are keying on color. The just-published What Color Is Your Diet? by David Heber (Regan Books, $25) maintains that a vibrant plate equals nutrition. Heber is referring to naturally colorful foods of the fruit and vegetable sort, not Mystery Colors X's and O's Chee-tos that enter the mouth orange but turn blue when chewed. Another book subscribing to a similar theory, The Color Code, will be out next spring. You can bet that Milk Changer Oreos and Blue's Clues applesauce won't be on any of the suggested diets. Do we really need a cookie that changes the color of the milk we dunk it in or a snack food that turns our tongues blue? We don't, but food companies do. Consumers spend $19-billion a year on snack foods, and the stiff competition pushes companies to the extreme to make their products stand out. Go to the snack shack at any Little League baseball field and listen to how kids, and their parents, talk about drinks. "Honey, do you want red or blue?" "Do they have green?" "I'll take an All-Sport black, Mom." What flavor is black? In the natural food world that would be olive, maybe truffles. The black drink is some sort of berry, but it tastes like sugar and that's what most kids want. All-Sport knows that. However, we seem to know less. It's a bad thing -- and it happens all the time -- when the grocery store checker can't tell the difference between asparagus and artichokes. There is a difference, even though they are both green. Is it too much to ask that children know a red Popsicle is cherry and a purple one is grape? Arranging a plate by color doesn't say much about our knowledge of nutritious foods (even diet books rely on gimmicks). We should understand that an all-starch (white) diet is not healthy and that daily doses of fruits and veggies such as broccoli (green), tomatoes (red) and bananas (yellow) are. The food companies won't teach our children this; parents should. It's not a crime to let your kids make funny faces on their burgers with green ketchup. Let them turn their milk pink and their tongues blue. Just know that huge corporations have your number. If you are buying two ketchups, green for the kids and red for the adults, then they've really got you. That's not so bad, as long as you understand that the foods that are good for us don't change color. -- Janet K. Keeler can be reached at (727) 893-8586 or by e-mail to krieta@sptimes.com.
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From the Times Taste section From the features wire |
