When I ask you to think about the color of salmon, you think of a deep pink
Yet farmed salmon is grey/white.
For what ?
In the wild, salmon feed on crustaceans rich in the natural pigment astaxanthin, the same pigment that makes flamingos pink.
But farmed salmon are mainly fed plant pellets. And to find this pink color, we will also give it a synthetic version of astaxanthin.
But why do we do it?
Well it’s a question of sensorial marketing.
Eating is an experience that strongly combines taste, smell and sight. The 3 are connected.
A white salmon causes cognitive dissonance, let’s just call it a bug in our brain!
The taste is the same, but the experience is unpleasant.
And it’s for the same reason that margarine sells best when it’s yellow like butter, and that Pepsi Crystal was a huge flop.
