I ordered a burger last Tuesday, and it was blue.
"Why is my burger blue?" I asked, innocently.
"Oh! We're making all of our food blue, all the best restaurants are doing it now." the waiter explained.
But I didn't want my burger to be blue. I like my burgers to be the same reliable dark brown color cooked meats are supposed to be. It didn't affect the taste in any way that I cared. I'd read in the news recently that there's a lot of innovations being made in blue food coloring, and the taste is nearly undetectable. I knew the food coloring was there, and if you'd asked, I'd say there definitely was a hint of unpleasantness, but we've all had bad burgers before, and I just assumed the chef was having an off day.
Sometimes humans make mistakes like that.
A week later, as I left my house to go to work. The milk had arrived, as I expect every second day during the work week.
The milk was blue.
I called up the milkman.
"Oh! Of course, we've got a new trial of blue milk now. It doesn't affect the price in any way, but now the milk is blue."
I didn't drink the milk.
My friend called me crazy. He said that I just have to get used to food being blue now. Everyone likes blue food better, or, at least, it's not really any worse than the non-blue food. It's free, so why would I complain?
"I just think it tastes weird." I explained, fruitlessly.
"I can't tell the difference, and most people say it's just fine for food to be blue."
But I didn't want my food to be blue. Was that so hard to understand? Even if they made the food coloring completely tasteless, I still didn't want it to be blue.
It's been a year now.
A year of food gradually turning more blue. The price of my (blue) milk went up. They blamed it on inflation, on innovations they've made in bottlecap technology. The blue milk now comes in a very fancy new (and very blue) package. But I knew the truth. The company that made blue food coloring had made it almost completely flavorless, and once all the food distributors got used to including it, the price had skyrocketed. Rival blue food coloring companies had come up, even some existing food additive businesses had shifted their focus almost entirely to producing blue food coloring. It was a shame, honestly. I quite enjoyed smokey flavors. But nobody bothered to make it anymore.
Two years in, and I broke.
"Why the fuck is my salad blue?" I had been looking forward to this salad. In last year, I had become vegetarian. I was sick of eating blue burgers and making blue chicken sandwiches. At least they couldn't make the leaves blue.
"Please don't speak to me like that, ma'am. I just serve the food." They had a point.
"I'm sorry. But do you serve anything that isn't blue?" I asked, meekly. I was embarrassed at myself. I try to be polite to staff. They're paid less than minimum wage most of the time. They didn't deserve to be the focus of my ire.
They pointed me to the disclaimer in the corner of the menu.
"We are a blue-first company!" It helpfully explained.
"All our food contains some amount of blue food coloring, but you can ask the chef in the back to remove it if you'd like".
I asked.
It's now the third year of Blue Food.
I stopped eating out. I've started making my own food at home. It's a lot more effort, and it's not always as tasty as something made by a professional chef, but at least it's not blue. They say there's no way to tell now. You could just close your eyes and you'd not even know! But I know. I can tell.
A friend offered to make me some "normal" food. It seemed fine, tasted okay. Until they revealed that they'd secretly put blue food coloring in it. I'm such a fool, see! Where's the problem? Sure, there's ethical concerns with blue food coloring, but one bite of a secretly blue apple isn't burning down the forests, so why even bring it up? They're not a friend anymore.
So now we're in our third year of blue food coloring. It's in the water now. I can't avoid it. I can't even shower now, as blue food coloring comes out of the taps. I make my own food but advancements in knives mean that even my homemade food is a little bit blue.
It's become my full time job to avoid blue wherever I can. I've resigned to the fact I cannot escape it. Even the pills I have to take to keep me alive are blue. I never had a problem with blue pills before, but now I'm suspicious of anything blue.
And I still don't like the taste.