Why the heck do chocolate cupcakes need blue food coloring??

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Seriously, if I had known it was in there I wouldn't have eaten any, my stomache hurts so bad. Why the heck do companies but food dye in everything??
Anybody else have dye allergies/reactions, etc? Red dyes make me hyper and/or dizzy depending on the amount, but blue's mess me up for days with cramps & vomiting and constipation, etc. but all I ever hear about are the red dyes...

They put dyes in the foods to "look" better.
They did a test where they had two glasses of orange juice that tasted exactly the same. The difference was that one glass of orange juice had a bit of dye in it to make it more "orangey" in color.

They brought in a whole bunch of people to taste-test the juices, and the majority of people said that the more "orangey" orange juice tasted better.

It's basically a mind trick, to help businesses make more money.

Blue for me results in mild anaphylaxis - resulting in hives everywhere and my eyes, throat, and tongue swelling.
Hasn't killed me yet, but probably could if I had enough
...and the allergists claim a blue food dye allergy doesn't exist. Right.

I avoid, as a general rule, all things blue, green, purple, or black.

Anyone remember crystal pepsi? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Pepsi

Denmark FOUGHT to be able to distribute polse! The European community originally refused because it has RED DYE #2!

I DO know how you feel though. They use yellow dye in french vanilla. Blue IS popular with chocolate.

I hate corporations and stupid people who dont realize that natural food always tastes better :X

hahaha I once did this taste test thing of chips with a friend of mine, it was sooo funny. We were just randomly picking and at the very end I was all joking about how funny it would be if they were exactly the same brand and psychologist had set up the test to f**k with our minds.

I took a painting class once, blue makes black look darker.

One of the odd truths is that all colors of light together make WHITE, and all colors of pigments make BLACK. Color printers USED to have 3 colors, and the three together made black. Of course, eventually, they had four "colors" like now. cyan, magenta,yellow, and black. Some even have like TWICE that many! Meanwhile, color light devices are usually red, green, blue! Funny, they taught us SOME of that in school, but red green blue? You would think it was red, blue, yellow. And cyan, magenta?!?!?!?

Just so you know, most current inkjet printers still work in exactly the same way, mixing the colors to produce black (and various greys), wasting your color ink. The black is generally only used if you print only black and white images. The only difference is that they both stay in the printer all the time so you don't have to switch them out. Just make sure you use the right setting when you print so you don't waste expensive color ink.

Also, blue won't make black look darker. It will make it look cooler. Since chocolate cake tends to be a warm brown, leaning toward red-orange, the blue would balance that (blue is the compliment of orange) and make it darker and more brown. I guess people like their chocolate cupcakes to be very dark instead of actually chocolate colored. Maybe they like to pretend it's dark chocolate, which really doesn't even make sense in the context of cake.

If possible I am trying to avoid all foods with die and I certainly am not giving any of it to my kids. I am starting to strictly shop at the natural health store for food. More expensive but worth it.

Yeah, I know some printers work that way. Not all do. As for cake, I have actually baked cakes FROM SCRATCH, and they look FINE! You DON'T need extra coloring! Things like Mint Ice cream, that I have ALSO made from scratch, will look like vanilla if you don't add coloring, but it tastes FINE! If you DO use coloring, a few little drops will color it fine.

Funny thing, Betty Crocker's cookbook NEVER called for artificial coloring in chocolate cake. In fact, if you want to color it, etc.... you have to use things like white chocolate, etc...

Blue doesn't make black look darker, anyone with a good colour sense knows that it makes it look deeper, which has an impression of making the darkness look nicer and more realistic, like the nighttime sky.

I would get into the physics behind that, but I'd be here for hours writing one post. It is quite interesting though.

I hate food dye with a passion, but I won't go out of my way to avoid it. It tastes disgusting in large enough amounts, but try to tell that to the people that make the icing for birthday cakes and other such cakes. I am fine with an icing that uses less than 1/8th the amount of dye to have a slighty less vibrant colour. When the icing doesn't taste sweet, and tastes like you put dirty money in your mouth, there is something wrong.

I know at least some of it anyway. I just think it is kind of interesting, and it seems funny.

Darker, deeper, whatever. I don't have much color sense, since I'm color blind.

I think it's safe to assume you mean the same thing... more or less :p