Here's Why Vegetable Bags Always Have Green Stripes

When picking out pre-packaged produce (say that ten times fast) at the grocery store, you might notice that some bags have colored lines on them. While these lines are indeed a crucial part of the design, their intention isn't to make the packaging look pretty. Rather, colored lines aid in an optical illusion that makes the bag's contents look prettier.

A prime example of this is pre-cut broccoli. To be honest, you shouldn't be buying pre-cut broccoli to begin with, but that's beside the point. Anyway, when stores sell pre-cut broccoli, they might sell it in bags with green lines. As broccoli sits, it starts to turn yellow, and this can be unappealing to shoppers. However, those green lines on the packaging give the illusion that the produce is greener, and therefore fresher.

Oh, but it's not just broccoli that is subjected to this marketing scheme. Grocery stores target plenty of other fruits and veggies using the same optical illusion. They gotta do something to trick you into spending more money.

For the same reason that stores sell broccoli in bags with green lines, they might also sell carrots in bags with orange lines, or avocados in green mesh bags. Think about it -– we usually see oranges sold in orange or red mesh bags, and lemons sold in yellow or green mesh. These packaging choices emphasize, or even alter, the food's color as we perceive it.

While we may recognize this illusion, it's difficult to separate it from reality. As one Reddit user explained, "[The lines are] more or so changing the general perceived hue of the contents ... The rest is filled in automatically by your brain." In other words, whatever color those lines are, your brain is going to fill in the spaces between with more of the same, regardless of what the broccoli, carrots, or lemons actually look like. All the more reason to take a good, hard look around your grocery store's produce department, we guess.