Pliny's orange hypothesis

Pliny's mum had not paid enough attention to the colour component of the Sunday dinner. With bright orange sweet and sour chicken, and extra carrots, she served large glasses of orange juice, followed by tinned peach dessert.

Later they were watching a program about the Galapagos Islands on TV. The iguanas were orangey-brown and the sunset was golden-red. Even the joints of the tiny underwater seaspiders looked like miniature glowing apricots. And there were volcanoes, all around.

Pliny began to formulate an hypothesis, that the colour of ingested food might be related to the perception of colour immediately afterwards. She would have liked to test her hypothesis but she needed someone not to have eaten the dinner.