Thank you!

The situation could not be tensor.

Parts of it already feel outdated since acceptance in the summer, but that just means the field is rapidly growing and developing! We're privileged to have the opportunity to crystallize our understanding of the field at this time, and I look forward to reassessing where we're at in a few years 😊.

@racicotleanne.bsky.social got the correct answer on the initial post, and hopefully #chemsky enjoyed the cool structures and pretty colors as much as I enjoy the featured snacks!

Finally, we have our blue raspberry Jolly Rancher (my favorite flavor), which gets its characteristic blue from Blue #1, a triarylmethane dye! Interestingly enough, its the spectral position of that little band on the blue side that largely controls the color, varying from blue to violet and green!

Next up: what makes Hot Cheetos so red? Well it's Red #40, the other azo-dye featured in the challenge! The added electron donating groups on the phenylsulfonate group as compared to Yellow #6 redshifts its absorption spectrum to absorb the yellow part of the spectrum, too, making it red.

Alright first up we've got the dye responsible for the Pineapple Jarritos: It's the simpler azo-dye on the left, AKA Yellow #6! With an extinction coefficient on the order of 10,000 M-1 cm-1, you could get the deep yellow seen in this soda with < 1 mg of Yellow #6.

Wow that's super cool! Like the bilin-containing proteins then or do they isolate the chromophore? Either way seems like a strategy that I'm surprised isn't more common.

Right?? It's making me try to think about what other petroleum-derived products are typically consumed. Anything with an arene on it? Maybe aspirin is a good counterexample?