You finally press the button.

Ding.

There is now a bottle labeled “Pure Spring Water” in the room.

Oh, and the room is now colored.

The bottle is slightly more blue than it ought to be.

The lightbulb is still a warm white color, which is good, but the thing holding it onto the ceiling is bright pink. The floor is red, the walls are green, and the ceiling is purple.

Oh, and you’re yellow. You look ridiculous.

The red button is now orange. Go figure.

The only thing to change in the room is the colors. Oh, other than the disco ball and speakers vanishing and a bottle of water appearing.

You drink the water. It tastes slightly better than average tap water. The color hasn’t changed its flavor. Unless it tastes faintly of blueberries, which it might. It’s either that or Blue No.1, which is nontoxic and approved by the FDA.

I’m sure you want to learn the history of artificial food colorants, don’t you?

You do?

Well today’s your lucky day!

Ok so, back in ancient history, like Ancient Egypt and Greece, people were already realizing that food isn’t always as pretty as it could be. There’s evidence that back in 300 BCE people were already using artificial colors to make wine more pretty.

Unfortunately, these colors were sometimes made out of things like lead oxides, which is slightly less than healthy.

So in 1881 the USDA decided to look into the ingredients that people were using to color food, to make sure they weren’t specifically lethal. To no one’s real surprise, they found things like arsenic and mercury were being used to color food.

Finally in 1906 a law was passed that said nothing directly poisonous could be put in foods. It took them a year, but eventually they came up with a list of seven colors that were 100% acceptable and approved for putting in foods.

But, let’s be real, seven colors isn’t enough. So in-

Sorry what?

You were just being sarcastic, and don’t really care about the history of food colorants?

Well why didn’t you just say so in the first place? Here I was, getting all excited about it, and instead of listening you’re contemplating how to end your life with that water bottle.

Sheesh, fine, I’ll stop.

See if I ever explain anything to you again.

DO YOU PRESS THE BUTTON?

Yes No