The other day I drank a smoothie that was the same color as the aquamarine eyeshadow I used to wear in middle school (blame this movie). The smoothie was Juice Press’s “Blue Magic,” and I couldn’t stop staring at its color. It isn’t dyed with food coloring; rather, its vibrant blue comes from Blue Majik, an extraction of the blue-green algae spirulina.
While most spirulina is a greenish teal, Blue Majik is a truer blue that can go from deep cobalt to bright robin’s egg depending on what food it’s mixed with. The water soluble antioxidant phycocyanin is responsible for the color, and to keep it at its most vibrant, it is extracted from spirulina and sold on its own as a powder under the moniker Blue Majik.
Though Blue Majik is touted as a superfood capable of lifting your mood and relieving physical discomfort, the science of such supplements is often lacking. I’m interested in Blue Majik because I am obsessed with blue. I can stare at Yves Klein’s IKB-covered canvases for hours, losing myself in the color. I’ve read Maggie Nelson’s Bluets over and over, until I notice blue everywhere as I walk. One place where I rarely see blue, however, is in my food.
Before Blue Majik, the best I’ve seen when it comes to edible blue are cornflowers and butterfly pea flower tea, but both are still pretty hard to find at the grocery store. With the wellness community’s adoption of Blue Majik, however, I’ve begun to see that elusive blue pop up readily. CAP Beauty’s Blue Majik coconut butter is available for purchase on the Urban Outfitters website; the Juice Press smoothie is made in practically every neighborhood in Manhattan; and containers of the powder can be found on Amazon, waiting to be stirred into everything from almond milk to salad dressing to cream cheese.
