Subscribers have it in the bag

We have laws in the US against the use of false or even deceptive advertising. You can’t just say your miracle drug made of sawdust and vinegar cures cancer. You can imply it, certainly, and if you phrase things well you can sell plain old water as a cure-all drug! This is how you get a charlatan to wind up running your health agency.

Still, in my opinion, some grocery store packages are very sneakily deceptive. I also think it should be illegal, and I don’t know why it isn’t.

The deception is when produce, usually fruit, is sold in bags that are colored in a way that makes the fruit look riper or more appealing than it really is. It’s extremely common, and in fact I saw it just the other day when shopping for oranges: 

Take a good look at those bags of oranges. In the middle is a transparent bag, and the oranges looks a bit yellow and unripe. But in the bags next to it, the oranges look ripe and yummy.

However, all those oranges are the same color! My wife handed me a bag to put in our cart, and I noticed the illusion right away. We then went through a few bags and saw all the oranges were the same.

This is a well-known illusion, one I’ve written about many times before, too. It’s called the Munker Illusion, and it’s based on what’s called the Bezold Effect, which is a more generalized phenomenon. Basically, a German scientist named von Bezold noticed that how you perceive a color depends on other colors nearby; it’s a contrast effect. If this sounds familiar, yes, it’s similar to The Dress Illusion from a few years back.

In this case, the produce bags have orange stripes running across them. When you see an orange fruit through those stripes, your brain perceives the fruit to be more orange in color. When you see it through the transparent part of the bag you see what’s closer to the true color.

Even up close the illusion is apparent. This sort of effect can be incredibly strong, even when you know it’s happening. My favorite example (and one of my very favorite illusions of all!) is this incredible one from Akiyoshi Kitaoka, a psychology professor in Japan who has created thousands of illusion (scroll down about ¼ of the way down the linked page to see it).

[Click here to get a much higher-res version of it, which is useful for zooming in and testing.] 

You can see there are three spirals embedded together. One looks red, one light blue, the other light green. 

Right? RIGHT?

Yeah, look again. The blue and green spirals are the same color. It’s true. Look at the spiral lines moving across them. Where they cross the blue spiral the lines look red or magenta. Where they cross the green they’re orange. Because contrast so strongly affects what you see, those two spirals appear to be different colors.

I can prove it: I created two squares and colored them myself. One is using the exact color from the green spiral, the other from the blue.

Those are the same color, specifically R=0, G=255, and B=148. You don’t have to believe me; grab the hi-res version of the spirals and open them in a photo processor (I used Photoshop but Gimp works too). Check the colors. They’re the same.

I know they’re the same but I cannot see them as anything but blue and green, at least, unless I zoom way in and then concentrate on looking at one and then the other. Then it’s harder to trick your eye.

This illusion is a bit tricky, even for an illusion. If the colors contrast, then the contrast is increased (or the colors can be perceived as different hues, like the spirals), but if the colors are similar the similarity increases, like with the orange bags.

Here’s another one that is impossible not to see:

I wrote an article about this illusion back on The Old Blog™, so you can go there and read it. But as you may have guessed, all those balls are the same color, a sort of brassy hue. The stripes in front of them make them appear yellowish, reddish, and bluish, depending on the color of the stripes. It’s an overwhelming illusion, just like the spiral. You can’t not see it.

This is the exact same thing happening with the oranges I saw; the orange stripes make them look more orange than they really are.

In my book that’s deceptive, and should be banned. I expect they get away with it because they also have the clear window in the bag, so they can claim they provide a real view. I’ve seen this practice done with green stripes for limes and yellow ones for lemons too.

Whenever I write about illusions, I mention that we cannot trust our eyes or our brains when we witness something; it’s incredibly easy to fool them. The phrase “Seeing is believing” is uttered like a truism, but it’s exactly wrong. It’s more like “believing is seeing”, until you understand why you’re seeing what you see. This will go a long way in being skeptical about sightings of ghosts, UFOs, and the like.

But here it has a more direct, practical impact, right on your wallet. 

And I have to add we didn’t buy the oranges because they clearly weren’t ripe. I prefer to get them individually anyway. You can see them better and be more sure they’re good, even if they cost a little more. For me, it’s better to spend a bit extra to get good quality then save money but get something bad. And it’s the principle of the thing, too. I don’t like it when people try to fool me.

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