the eyes of the beholder

the most recent exercise assigned by my professor, Dr. Surprenant, in my technology of information class has to do with color blindness; and it is designed to acquaint the student with the problems created when you consider colorblind people in the design of a web page. apparently about 1 in 20 people may be colorblind (the statistics for men are much higher than women), and when you consider them as a potential audience the numbers can therefore be very large. the assignment included taking a colorblind test as well as using a simulation to see how colorblind people view the world and to experience how palettes change from normal vision through the various ranges of color deficiencies. yes, color blind people DO see color; but their deficiencies are generally grouped around the red/green and yellow/blue spectrums as well as some form of monochromatism. anyway, some of the comparisons i did of course had to do with food and drink. we all pretty much know that food and drink are experienced with many of our senses and the first one that comes into play is usually sight (although me may, of course, become aware of food smells before we even see them). we even speak of "our eyes being bigger than our stomachs" when we refer to overeating because everything looks so appetizing. with this in mind, how appetizing can foods look when viewed through the eyes of someone with color deficiencies? to my eyes, not very. with the vibrancy of reds/greens/yellows and blues gone or muted food will look bland and flat. of course, these are the associations that we have made to food as "normal" color sighted people. we can tell when certain fruits are perfectly ripe by their color, we know that certain meats are done the way we like them because of their color, and our appetites are stimulated by the wide array of colors at a buffet. people with color deficiencies do not have these same frames of reference and it cannot be expected that we can even describe to them the "vibrancy" of the red on a pepper or the "richness" of the purple on a plum. they anticipate their eating experiences from a very different palette perspective, and perhaps more from the associations of smells, and previous experiences with textures. i included the links to a couple of websites over there on the side for you to visit and experience yourself. one of them allows you to choose pictures and web pages to compare in "normal" and color deficient views. if beauty is indeed in the eyes of the beholder then in this case more than any other it is not just based on a de-facto observation but on objective preference.