Opinion: Prepare For The Next Vegetable Gimmick – Purple Cauliflower

It is the year of the unicorn, and by that, we mean unicorn coloured foods. Everywhere you look bright, colourful food greets your eyes – freshly uploaded to the ‘gram’. The latest food to regain prominence in this age of ‘social media stunting’ is the purple cauliflower. And, before you ask, no, it doesn’t taste any different from a regular cauliflower, but we’re sure it will get you more likes.

Although it almost looks artificially dyed because it’s so bright, rest assured, purple cauliflower is dyed naturally thanks to antioxidants called anthocyanins. The same antioxidants are found in other deeply coloured foods like red cabbage, cherries, and blackberries.

OMG I just bought PURPLE cauliflower ????? #ihaveneverseenthis #purple #purplecauliflower

A post shared by Cloie Syquia Skarne (@cloiesyquia) on Jul 17, 2017 at 9:34am PDT

We can only imagine why purple cauliflower has suddenly gone mainstream (it’s the social media likes). With food pages touting regular cauliflower as ‘boring’ even though the taste and texture are literally exactly the same, it’s no surprise that people have jumped on the ‘magical’ cauliflower bandwagon.

As a planet obsessed with looks and likes sometimes it takes purple cauliflower to make you take a good hard look in the mirror. While I’m certainly not biased against colourful, beautiful things, and hopefully this does make eating your veggies a bit easier, social media stunting has definitely made me cynical as to the reason for purple cauliflower’s popularity.

Is brighter food more delicious? Or do social media likes just make us think it is?