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Food and Drink

17th Jan 2018

The Bizarre Thing We NEVER Realised About Skittles

Shirleydonlon

Skittles have been around for as long as we can remember. 

The multi-coloured sugary sweets have been a cheeky guilty pleasure of ours throughout the years, but we never realised that despite being different colours, the sweets all have the exact same flavour. 

via GIPHY

Yep, you read correctly.

The purple, red, orange, green and yellow skittles all taste the exact same, according to Cosmopolitan

Don Katz, a neurophysiologist from Brandeis University, explained that our senses can play tricks on us with the smell and appearance of the sweets.

He discussed an experiment that was carried out by Charles Spence, which proved just that.

During the experiment students were given clear beverages with flavourings in them including orange, grape, apple and lemon.

The students were able to identify the flavours correctly until he added the wrong food colouring to each liquid, making apple flavour purple, and the grape flavour orange.

Katz said: “While I wouldn’t say they went to chance, their ability to tell which was which got really subpar all of a sudden.”

“The orange beverage tasted orange [to the students]. The yellow beverage tasted like lemonade. There wasn’t a thing they could do about it.”

He added: “The Skittles people, being much smarter than most of us, recognized that it is cheaper to make things smell and look different than it is to make them actually taste different.” 

“So, Skittles have different fragrances and different colours — but they all taste exactly the same.”

Mind. Blown.

READ MORE: Guinness Has Released A New Lager That Will Appeal To Everyone

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