I started thinking the other day (always a bad sign) and somehow or another got to artificial flavorings in food and drink. So my question is, what the heck is an artificial flavoring made of? I am imagining some chemist tasting his experiment, and thinking “ya know, if I add a little iodine to this I bet it would taste just like chicken!” Whose job is it to come up with these things, and what do they use to do so? And if I was allergic to starwberries, could I still eat stuff that is artificially strawberry flavored? Would I be in trouble if I were Muslim and ate an artificially bacon-flavored bagel? Could a Kosher Jew eat artificially cheese-flavored chips with a steak?
The how…Chemicals
The why…cheaper
As to the religious questions…I ha\ve no idea
I was actually hoping for more specific answers in the how and why categories. The religious questios were just thrown in there 'cuz I’m a smartass.
(s-t-r-a-w-b-e-r-r-i-e-s…)
(q-u-e-s-t-i-o-n-s…)
Sigh
The chemicals start out as simple compounds. I did an experiment in chemistry once where we had to classify the scents of various compounds. It was for scent not taste, but I think it is the same concept. One compound smelled just like peanut butter. And it was a common simple compound we used in the lab before.
I bet they add the chemical to a taste-free carbohydrate base (or sugar, depending on what they are making) and then taste test to see if they got it right.
And generally, artificial flavors will not induce an allergic reaction if one has an allergy to the real thing. The real thing and the artificial flavor are not related, they just happen to taste similar.
Artificial flavors are usually simpler. stronger, and more stable than their natural counterparts. They are sometimes just synthetic versions of naturally occurring flavors, sometimes minor chemical variations on naturally occurring flavors, and sometimes, by bizarre coincidence, completely unrelated chemicals will taste the same as natually occurring flavors.
Virtually all flavor chemicals are organic; most have aromatic ring structures.
I believe the synthesis of most flavor chemicals probably blows them out of kosher waters (howd’ya like that metaphor?), but there could be exceptions, or I could be entirely wrong.
There is a section in “Fast Food Nation” by Eric Schlosser about flavor manufacturing which discusses natural and artificial flavoring. Basically, it’s not so much the ingredients that go into the flavors but the process by which these ingredients are extracted and combined.
Er, which makes up the difference between the two.
IIRC , the Master has spoken on this topic. I will try and find a link later when the board is running faster.
Here’s a brief mailbag answer:
We made banana oil once in an Organic Chem lab. The whole floor smelled like bananas for a good week (three lab sessions making the stuff). IIRC, it was just isopentyl acetate (a fairly easy and common first-year laboratory). We also isolated limonene from oranges another time (yummy oranges, even though officially, they weren’t eaten in the labs 
Anyways, we did the extraction and ran IR and NMR and whatnot to confirm what we had. Given that compound’s structure, with a bit of thought, I might be able to come up with a theoretical synthesis of it. Then, you experiment and try it out, and eventually end up with (hopefully) something with high yeilds, high purity, and the right flavour/smell.
OK. Now I have a sort of a clue. I guess I still don’t quite get the how… I mean, I understand the basic mechanics of it, but I really do wonder precisely how one would isolate a strawberry flavor molecule in a bottle of, say, iodine… or how one would get perhaps PART of a flavor molecule and know what to add to it to complete the process. However, feel free to stop answering this question now. I’m putting this one in my “Questions I Thought Would Be Simple But Don’t Have Enough Background To Even Understand The Answers” file. Thanks all!
Dude, get off the iodine; iodine isn’t in it. The molecules of flavor are complex, and are found in complex places, like petroleum or… strawberries.
You start by analyzing the strawberries themselves; see what molecules they have have in them, determine which ones contribute the flavor. If this molecule is plentiful and easy to extract, you’re done. If not, maybe you can synthesize it. Perhaps the addition of a hydroxyl or methyl group will intensify the flavor; maybe snipping off a tail will stabilize it.
Or start at the other end; start extracting chemicals from petroleum, synthesize new ones, taste and sniff hundreds of variations (don’t forget the toxicology testing). Keep a notebook. Eventually, you get something useful.
After years or decades of this, you get a feel for which molecular structures are promising; you try these before the others. There are theoretical models for this kind of thing.
This dude looks like a lady. And I KNOW it isn’t iodine, but chemistry is (obviously) not my forte. Your example of extracting chemicals from petroleum was what I was kinda thinking of, however. That’s what I was wondering about - how do you find flavoring compounds in things that are not, by nature, flavors.
LifeOnWry, flavor happens when molecules bind to receptors on your tongue or combinations of many molecules binding to many receptors.
However, molecule-receptor binding isn’t as restrictive as the lock-key model since many similarly shaped molecules can bind to any single receptor.
Researchers try to find out what natural molecules induce flavour and then try to create artificial molecules that are similar in shape that could induce the same flavour.
Why? Usually because it is cheaper than extracting the natural flavour.
OK, so I’m following the other bits, but how does one do toxicology testing ? Is it foolproof, or do people poison themselves trying to make the ideal strawberry flavour ?
Thanks,
SD
Dr Frankenstein–“Here, Igor: take a little nip out of this test tube.”
Igor–“Yers, Marster! ARRRGGGh!”
**THUMP! **
Dr F.–“Oh, dear. Well. If at first you don’t succeed…” 
Silly rabbit!
and while we’re on that subject, that’s how you do toxicolgy testing; you feed the stuff to animals (and inject it, possibly). The more different animals you use, the more predictive the test is for humans, but it’s expensive (and excessive testing needlessly kills critters that would otherwise live until the following week…nevermind).
Such testing may start with bacteria, yeast, brine shrimp, fish, etc. But usually you’re pretty sure, so you jump straight to the mice.
Just to point something out - it is ridiculously complicated to obtain permission to test something on animals - there is YEARS of paperwork and pre-animal-testing testing to be done to ensure consistent product yields, lack of foreign (unwanted) components, etc before you can even consider sending it out to animal trials. And then more years before human clinical trials. A LOT of what gets made (be it flavour or other drug products) never even make it to animal testing. And even once its there, and even once its on the market, the producing companies still check batch after batch of the stuff to make sure that it continues to meet the standards that they and the FDA have set - because the moment it doesn’t, it gets pulled from the market.
Anyways, sorry that was off topic, but its something I know something about, so I just had to share
And that’s how we get Mutant Super-Mice Overlords?
Thanks a lot.