My Yellow Americans

Does the flavor of a lemon affect the way we perceive the color of a lemon?

      You: "Lol wut?"

Allow me to elaborate. So, if you look through any third-grader's school supply list, there's gonna be a box of 805 crayons listed on there, and within that box of 805 crayons, there is a crayon labeled "Lemon Yellow." But it's not really so lemony in color, is it? It's much, much more vivid than an actual lemon, and much more vivid than the other yellows in the box, like, well, "Yellow," and it's a ballpark's throw away from "Goldenrod". (Doesn't even come close to that one). By comparison, the "Lemon Yellow" crayon is much more intense than it's counterparts, though not quite as violent as highlighter yellow, (it doesn't jump off the page and punch you in the eye with quite the same ferocity), but it is still vivid enough to feel very at home in the 80's.

But the actual, real life color of a vine-ripened lemon-fruit is not really so painful to look at as the crayon color "Lemon Yellow" would suggest. In reality it's much similar to the regular "Yellow" color in the 805 crayon box. So I gotta wonder, is the flavor of the lemon, that "dear god what did I just bite into" sourness affect the way we perceive the color? Does that intense flavor we associate with the fruit combine with the way we see the fruit's color? For example, say a lemon tasted like, I dunno, cardboard or rice or something, would we think to associate it with such a strikingly acidic color as "almost-highlighter-yellow"? Probably not. We'd think "Lemon Yellow" was actually a more brownish, dullish yellow, like that "Ew Yellow" that you see on cars sometimes.

No. It's that flavorful adventure, that painful but satisfying taste that gives the "Lemon Yellow" color its intensity. Least that's what I think.

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