How Color-Harmony on a Food Plate Affects Consumers Perceptions

The aim of the present research was to explore consumers’ color-harmony preferences on a food plate in relation to four different criteria; aesthetics, taste, healthiness, and satiety. With respect to this aim, four different food plates were designed based on four color-harmony types used in fine arts – analogous, complementary, triadic and quadratic. The sample of the study consisted of 1.162 participants from Turkey who responded to an online survey including pairs of color-combinations and reported their preferences in terms of the selected criteria. The results were analyzed using Cochran’s Q Test and Scheffe Test. The results clearly demonstrated that people respond differently to meals comprising of different color-combinations. One major finding was that people seemed to find quadratic food-color harmony as the least tasty and healthy food even though they found it aesthetics. In correspondence to the results of several other studies, the present study found that attractiveness of food plates could be increased through the use of more colors to a certain level. Food plates with quadratic color-harmony were detected to be the least tasty and healthy and less filling by Turkish consumers.