The Flavor Humans Invented From Nothing

If you were to walk in a forest, you would never find a blue raspberry. That’s because they don’t exist.

The flavor we call “blue raspberry” doesn’t actually come from a real fruit. There is no blue raspberry growing anywhere on earth. No plant produces it. No animal eats it. It’s a complete invention.

It was loosely inspired by a dark raspberry variety called whitebark raspberry, or Rubus leucodermis. That fruit grows in North America from Alaska down to Mexico. When ripe, it’s a dark purple, almost black, with a whitish bloom on the surface that gives it the name whitebark. If you squeeze the juice, it’s purple. Not blue. But the flavor is supposed to be similar to a red raspberry, just a little more tart.

In the 1970s, food companies needed a new way to label their raspberry products. They had a problem. Cherry was red. Strawberry was red. Watermelon was red. Punch was red. Everything fruit flavored and aimed at kids was red. Red was crowded.

So they wanted to give raspberry its own identity. Something distinct. Something that wouldn’t get lost on the shelf next to all the other red things. They chose bright blue.