What Do Flavorings and Fragrances Actually Taste and Smell Like?
Food ingredient labels. How we hate them. How suspicious they make us. Who knows what acesulfame is, or what carboxymethyl cellulose does to our bodies? To cope, most of us simply stick to the dictum food writer Michael Pollan proposed in his 2011 book In Defense of Food: if your grandmother does not know what it is, better that you do not know either. Except for one ingredient, flavorings and fragrances. That does not bother us. There is no need to know what it is. We grew up with flavorings and fragrances. Our grandmother grew up with them. This mysterious family is the most familiar thing in processed food, and the most taken for granted.
In nature, the peach produces its own flavors. As it ripens, its cell membranes loosen and shed fragments, which break down into smaller and smaller fragments, and each fragment is a new substance with its own properties, the smallest of them being aromas. In the fruit, notes of almond, violet, a general tropical note that suggests pineapple, coconut and mango without being any of them, and even a cheesy note accumulate. One molecule is also produced by fermentation bacteria. This is the world of flavor in nature, a shared reservoir of aroma notes, every blend of which creates a unique flavor recipe, like that of a peach.
In candy factories, they make less of an effort. They, meaning we, settle for the Chinese imitation, some sort of smell distilled from some sort of source, whether peach or tar, that resembles the fruit’s aroma closely enough. In 1851, it was discovered that the pungent stench of isoamyl isovalerate, an accident that happens to a certain type of alcohol, was similar to the smell of lead that then wafted from cans of preserved apples, and thus the apple candy was born. Another substance, methyl anthranilate, smelled to an industrial chemist like Concord, the American grape variety, and thus the world’s grape pops and grape-like flavors were born. Since then, we have only improved. Industry has learned to concoct complex flavors, invented ones like Red Bull, or more faithful imitations than ever of the flavors of fruits in nature. And as noted, that also does not worry us. The amount of flavorings and fragrances in food is measured in millionths. At that amount, nothing can do any harm.
Then one day you come across real, healthy food that is supposed to be tasty, Danone Actimel Strawberry. The ingredient list begins with milk, sugar and strawberry. What else is needed? It turns out, flavorings and fragrances. They are on the label. Apparently the amount of strawberry, 2%, is not enough for anything other than the right to list the word before dietary fiber, whose share is 1.6%. That is not enough for taste. Fine, that is understandable.
Even Knorr’s “Real Chicken Soup” contains, after salt, sugar, spices, dried vegetables, IMP and GMP, the added item “flavorings and fragrances.” Flavor and smell of what? Chicken, of course. The real soup powder contains 3.6% chicken meat. The 3.6% are real, but the flavor has to come from somewhere else. That too is forgivable. We do not buy cheap processed food for quality proteins and fresh fruit. It is only worth remembering that what looks like food from the outside probably contains fillers, a tenth of the usual amount of the nutritious ingredient, and flavor.
But then you encounter another surprise, supposedly real food. Osem’s whole wheat Lachmit: 90% whole flour, salt, sugar under four different names, including glucose syrup, barley malt extract and caramel. And added to them, in the whole wheat cracker, flavorings and fragrances. Why? And there they are too in Symphony white cheese, with no additives. And in Actimel, this time the white one, natural flavor. What are the flavorings doing in Telma’s “real mayonnaise” and “real mustard”? Why are they needed in addition to the sugars and spices in several pastramas, “old style” and “whole cut,” from Yachiam or Oof Tov? And also in some pesto spreads, and in all marinade bottles? Is a marinade not itself a flavoring? What are they hiding there?
Flavor manufacturers are not hiding anything. They say it openly and simply, as the Israeli company Frutarom did in the public report it published a year before it was acquired by the flavor giant IFF in 2016, in which it described its activity as “creating new flavors, enhancing existing flavors,” and then “masking certain flavors.” That masking accounts for about a third of the work of flavor manufacturers. It is this, not preservatives, that is the core of the fakery. Crackers, sausages, spreads, sauces, they are not what they seem. Their ingredients did not look great even when they were harvested. But since then they have also been crushed to micron size, separated into fats and liquids, broken down, sterilized, heated, dried and distilled. Everything delicate was simply destroyed, from vitamins to aromas. The resulting ingredients, those with names such as “milk components” and “plant proteins,” are not sweet and umami, with the smell of flowers and almond, but metallic, bitter and sour or medicinal. Fats have oxidized. Ingredients with familiar names have lost their identity. Ultra-processing destroys everything, including taste, and a major role of flavorings and fragrances is to mask and block the real taste of products.
Taste and smell are a language of nature. They are the “come, take” and also the “go away, or harm will come to you.” Artificial flavorings also speak. Their message is: if we are here, it means there is a problem with everything else.
Asaf Avir is the author of the book Not a Cookbook
