Apparently, the food industry has gotten pretty good (depending on your taste) at synthesizing artificial flavors and substitute flavorings. There’s artificial cream and sweeteners for your coffee, artificial flavoring for your soft drinks, etc. They’re also pretty good at making aromas (perfumes, candles, you get the idea).
Now, lots of people are attracted to tobacco. Granted, the popularity of tobacco is due to it’s addictive nature, but there must be something in the “flavor” that people enjoy.
So, why is it that nobody’s come up with anything with a tobacco flavor, without the addictive agents, carcinogens, and other unhealthful side effects?
No tobacco flavored gum, no ice cream, no mocha-tobacco at Starbuck’s, nothing.
I’m sure that some people think that sounds awful, but I suspect that’s because of the unpleasantness associated with burnt cigarette butts, ashes and so forth. But why can’t somebody harness the “flavor” without all the nastiness?
(I’ll admit, I love a good chaw of tobacco, but I gave it up for the obvious reasons).
Why do I want to continue " … finest juicy chunks of fresh Cornish Ram’s bladder, emptied, steamed, flavoured with sesame seeds, whipped into a fondue, and garnished with lark’s vomit"?
But the smell of really fine tobacco is wonderful! I confess, I’ve pondered this before. The answer, I suspect is that actual tobacco would, in fact, taste horrible, (and be toxic, to boot). Since no one’s gotten in the habit of using it in cooking before, there’s no great demand now for artificially flavored tobacco soufle.
But with all the flavors they can now synthesize, couldn’t they find a way to make something that tastes like the smell of fresh tobacco? Because fresh tobacco smells sooooo nice.
If you stop and think about it (or actually, just turn on your TV), there’s a pretty good reason for it: The anti-smoking loonies would be in hysterics. They’d launch ads that screamed it was a covert plot by the tobacco companies to get people to start smoking. The FDA would find some convoluted reason why it would have to prohibt the sales of the items, and it’d take years of expensive litigation to get that reversed, and the only way the company could make up the costs associated with all of this is by inserting an addictive agent (say, heroin) into the food, to insure a steady supply of customers.
Besides, with tobacco being the “demon weed” and all these days, you’d have a tough time selling it, even if the FDA let you and the anit-smokers ignored you.
Well Tucker, your reasoning kinda falls apart when you examine the past. Consider the 1940’s when physicians were actually giving testimonials about the health benefits of tobacco use. If it was a palatable food product or additive, they’d certainly have done it long ago.
As one who was peer pressured into trying chewing tobacco, I can attest to the overall grossness of the taste. Even with the mint or whatever other flavor they add to chew, the leafy taste makes you gag. (Most friends of mine that tried it gagged and/or vomited the first time they tried it.)
Yeah, but did they have the technology to synthesize the flavor of tobacco back in the 1940’s? I can remember my mom (who was born in the early 1930’s) telling me about how poorly margarine (or as she sometimes calls it “oleo”) tasted back then. According to her, it wasn’t until the mid to late 60’s that the stuff began to resemble butter flavor. I do know that doctors were advocating tobacco as a health tonic (I’ve met one man who’d been smoking since he was four. His doctor put him on cigarettes to contol his epilepsy.), but also remember what kinds of things they were advocating tobacco for: nervous disorders, depression, and (at least in one case: epilepsy), I don’t think (though I might be wrong about this) that doctors ever advocated tobacco as a general health improvement they way they would proper nutrition. Based on that reason alone (and the fact that there was still a pretty powerful religious movement in this country at that time, Prohibition having only just ended a decade or so before) that any attempt to add tobacco (or tobacco flavoring) to food would have met with strong opposition. (The anti-smoking movement is not a new phenominon. There’s been anti-smoking efforts since Sir Walter Raleigh introduced tobacco to Europe.)
Why the heck would they need the technology to synthesize tobacco flavor when they had actual tobacco plants, full of natural tobacco flavor, in abundance?
Just a thought, but wouldn’t we be talking about tobacco smoke flavoured products here? I mean, I’m sure that many Dopers don’t mind the flavour of marijuana smoke, but would balk at the idea of chewing on a handful of cannabis clippings. There’s a reason why folks bake the stuff into brownies.
Maybe someone could market a line of Lucky-Strike Liquid Smoke? Mmm… BBQ…
My wife’s granddad led the team of chemists that came up with artificial vanilla shortly after WWII. They were mostly looking for a way to use-up paper mill effluent. They ended up with a formula using waste sulphite liqueur of paper nulls, coal tar extracts and eugenol (the oil from cloves). Makes you hungry just thinking of it doesn’t it.
My point is that it doesn’t seem any less probable that some smart folks could have come up with a yummy artificial tobacco [smoke] flavour circa 1940.
But if there was such an artificial (free of addictive qualities) flavour, the Cigarette Industry might see it as a threat to their existence. The government could view such an invention as proof that non-addictive cigarettes are possible & require that all cigarettes be so. And, as some smokers have already stated, if sales of cigarettes depended solely on their flavour, the industry would be screwed.
BTW – Almost everything vanilla these days uses artificial vanilla. Mmm… Sulphite liqueur of paper nulls…
