Picking Halloween candy by color? The wrapper’s promise may not survive the first bite

Halloween is here and from costumes to candies, you are excited about everything. You are reminiscing with your friends how you used to decorate your home and have traditions with your family. Some of you still cook the same family recipes to remember the joy you had when you were younger. The one memory that is almost fresh in everyone’s mind is their love for trick-or-treating and their favorite Halloween candy.

Growing up you have been buying your favorite candy every year but what if the packaging of your candy changes? Will it impact the taste even when there is no change in any ingredient of that chocolate?

Let us take an example: you reach into a Halloween candy bowl and pick the green wrapper. You may be hoping for it to taste like mint. Someone beside you picks up the red one, expecting something fruity. Neither of you has checked the label.


You haven’t even looked at the candy, and still the packaging tells you what kind of taste you are expecting. However, it may taste different than what you expected and if the wrapper changes, your expectations also change.


A study published in Food Quality and Preference in September 2018 focused on the distinction you make when the wrapper changes.

Psychologist Debra Zellner, conducted research examining how coloured metallic wrappers influenced flavour expectations and what happened when people tasted the candy. The study was led by Montclair State University to find out the wrapper versus taste distinction.

Can candy wrapper colour suggest a flavour?

Yes, according to research, wrapper colors build an image in your mind of what you expect and associate with familiar flavors. But the same color can provide different context. Green wrapping suggested mint when participants considered candy. The same color suggested lemon or lime when they considered a beverage.

Color doesn’t always give the same message for every product. Its meaning depended partly on the product people thought they were receiving.

If you are going for a Halloween haul, be careful about what you buy. Check the labels, read the ingredients and decide what colors and flavors you would love to have at that Halloween party.

Did the wrapper change what people tasted?

Here comes the important twist. When participants tasted a plain white spun-sugar candy, wrapper color did not affect their identification of its flavour. Nor did it change how much they liked it, or their ratings of sweetness and flavour intensity.

Their flavor reports aligned more closely with the candy’s own color than with its wrapping. According to the researchers in this field, the appearance of the candy matters. The wrapper of the story has a stronger influence on what to expect from the taste. The external packaging matters.

A flashy wrapper can set the tone for what to expect and sometimes even if the taste isn’t that good but the wrapper can build an image so you could end up liking that candy.

Why does the brain connect colors with flavors?

The past experiences Previous experience helps explain why colour can feel informative.

Oxford University psychologist Charles Spence’s 2015 review, published in Flavour, describes how food colour helps establish expectations before eating. Those associations can differ between cultures and age groups.

A colour repeatedly encountered alongside a particular flavour can become a useful shortcut. It is a prediction based on experience, rather than a reliable ingredient list.

Spence’s review also discusses how mismatches between appearance and flavour can produce disappointment. Food may fail to meet the expectation its appearance encouraged. The surprise comes from comparing what arrived with what seemed likely.

Is flavour something we experience only through the tongue?

Flavour doesn’t just mean talking about sweetness or sourness. In a 2015 Cell Perspective study, Spence researched about how we understand flovors. According to him, Spence called it a multisensory experience. The brain combines information from different senses rather than relying on one isolated signal.

So, the appearance of any product actually interfere with the experience who are expected to have, and when to comes to food, then the taste may also vary on how people perceive the external look of the food.

The distinction helps explain why predicting “mint” from a wrapper does not necessarily make an unflavoured sweet taste minty. Expectations matter, but their influence has limits.

What does the study mean for Halloween candy?

The research offers a useful way to think about the colorful assortment arriving at American doorsteps.

It was not a test of every Halloween brand. Its findings concern particular experimental materials, including plain white spun-sugar candy. They cannot establish how strongly familiar logos or flavour labels affect every shopper.

A red wrapper is therefore no guarantee of cherry. Equally, this result does not prove packaging never affects tasting.

The next time your hand heads straight towards a favourite colour, pause before checking the label. You may already have a flavour in mind. The first bite still has something to say.