They have so many artificial flavors for almost anything.
Is there a flavor they can’t duplicate?
I’d argue that they can’t duplicate strawberry. Artificial strawberry is a crime against nature.
Albatross!
You know those little boxes of “Bertie Botts’ Every-Flavor Beans” that have popped up since the Harry Potter books became best-sellers? Well, I’ll have you know that the booger-flavored jellybeans taste nothing like real boogers.
What?
Yes, the inability to faithfuly duplicate the flavor of albatross has been an albatross around the industry’s neck for years.
/Runs and hides
It would be possible to make a convincing artificial strawberry flavor, even if it meant duplicating the flavor-bearing chemicals in real strawberries in the exact same proportions. However, this may be forbiddingly expensive, and it may be more cost-effective to use real strawberries or a less convincing artificial approximation. Some flavors are really easy to reproduce artificially, particularly when only one molecule is responsible for the bulk of the flavor (e.g. with many fruits). Others are more difficult (meats, especially) but it’s still possible to get at least a reasonable approximation.
commasense, Joe Random: I was only able to write that after I got up off the floor, having immediately thought of the line: “Of course you don’t get f—ing wafers with it!” Now, if I had thought of “worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for sixpence every four years”*, I would have risked endangering my health.
*: IIRC this is an older version, and Live at the Hollywood Bowl has ‘fourpence every six years’ (a tenth of a farthing per fortnight).
I remember many years ago coming across a strawberry soda that I thought was amazingly like the real flavor. But I’m not a big strawberry fan.
One of my favorite throwaway comedy lines of all times is “It’s got to be some flavor, I mean everything’s got a flavor.” The idea that you could check out the flavor of anything is delightfully weird.
Which reminds me of the joke: Do you know what the difference between an oral and a rectal thermometer is?
The flavor!
I would be surprised if some of the ‘strawberry’ flavors in products weren’t “artificially” created. Keep in mind that on nutrition labels “natural flavors” just means that it is a flavor found in nature–it could be an artificially synthesized chemical in your food, but as long as that molecule is found in nature, it’s still a “natural flavor.”
What bothers me are “artificial flavors”–that means somebody invented the flavor in a lab; the taste of red kool-aid, for example, is found nowhere in nature.
In the book “Fast Food Nation”, the author, Eric Schlosser, states that there is a highly secretive ‘flavor industry’ located mostly in New Jersey that makes certain that that foods we eat have the flavor we expect and also that the products we use from soaps to perfumes to foods to anything imaginable have the smells, tastes and even textures we expect at all times. He contends that the flavors are so vital to business that without the flavor industry, the fast food industry would not exist. The flavor industry ensures that when one craves, say, a McDonalds burger, a Whataburger will not do.
Using ‘artificail strawberry’ as an example, the author reports it contains amyl acetate, amyl butyrate, amyl valerate, anethol, anisly formate, benzyl acetate, benzyl isobutyrate, butyric acid, cinnamyl isobutyrate, cinnamyl vlaerate, cognac essential oil, diacetyl, diprophy ketone, (continue on for a full paragraph…approximately 51 different chemical compounds).
He also said the distinction between artificial and natural flavors was “arbitrary and absurd”, with some “natural” flavors being lab created and some “artificial flavors” more naturally derived that its artifical counterpart. Very confusing.
Schlosser said that he dipped fragrance testing filters into vials, closed his eyes, and smelled cherries, grilled onions, shrimp and grilled hamburgers among others.
This part of Schlosser’s book was very interesting to me- I had no idea that my taste buds we of such interest!
The companies in NJ include IFF (International Flavors and Fragrances), Givaudan, Haarmann and Reimer, Takasago, Flavor Dynamics, Frutarom, and Elan Chemical.
I always thought popcorn tasted like earwax.
I’ve heard that the vomit-flavored bean was the result of an earlier attempt by the Jelly-Belly Company to create a pizza-flavored bean.
Worth mentioning that if they were so labelled, they jolly well ought to taste authentic; at least they would here.
UK food labelling regulations dictate:
[something] flavour [product] = may not actually contain any traces of said [something] and may in fact be entirely artifically flavoured.
[something] flavoured [product] = must contain flavourings based on the actual [something].
So here, at least, booger(actually called ‘bogey’, to further confuse matters) flavoured jellybeans would be legally required to contain actual nasal mucous as the primary flavouring agent (which I suspect would in turn simply make them illegal to sell).
My kids love Bertie Botts… at least they say they do, but they bite each bean in half, share the halves, gnaw them a little and usually spit their half out.
Some of the awful flavors include sardine, earthworm (who tested that for authenticity?), spinach, dirt (very realistic and disgusting- possible the worst!), spaghetti, and soap.
Ca3799: From Fast Food Nation, p. 126 of the first paperback edition:
This isn’t really arbitrary or absurd, except that people are likely not to appreciate that amyl acetate is amyl acetate, regardless of whether it’s ‘from a natural source’ or made in a lab. It’s not possible to use mashed-up real bananas in many convenience foods, because the food may require more banana flavor than can be provided with a small amount of real bananas, and may add too much to the cost.
So, if something tastes like bananas because it contains bananas, the ingredient listing will say ‘bananas’. If it tastes like bananas because it contains amyl acetate which was extracted from banans, it contains ‘natural flavor’. If it contains synthetic amyl acetate that did not come from bananas, it contains ‘artificial flavor’. But flavor chemists make one more distinction that isn’t found on ingredient labels. Flavors that are chemically identical to the actual flavor molecules found in the real food but are made synthetically in a lab are called ‘synthetic flavors’. Flavors which are made by combining various chemicals not found in the food are ‘artificial’ or ‘simulated’ flavors.
This is an FDA regulation for ‘natural flavors’ (source):
New Jersey is indeed the place for these things. On my way home, I used to pass by a place called Firmenich – every day there was a different aroma in the air. The scents were always quite pleasant, but I can’t imagine what it would be like to work there since the aroma was detectable a mile or so away from the plant. Imagine coming home after doing a run of “cheap whore” scent and trying to explain that to the missus.
I have colleagues who have worked in the foods industry in New Jersey as flavor chemists – they tell interesting tales of their prior employers.