Not long now, the first domestic strawberries will hit the market. Just the thought of their juicy sweet taste makes our mouths water. Strawberry is also the preferred flavor in fruit yogurts. Only there is not much left of the full flavor of the fruit. What actually gives a food its flavor? Which flavorings are used in industrial production? And how can the consumer recognize this?
What are flavors?
To the chemist, flavors are volatile chemical compounds that are usually present in minute amounts, yet give a food its distinctive character. If aroma and flavor compounds were absent from certain industrial products, we would find the food bland.
To date, around 5,000 aroma substances have been identified in nature. Many foods naturally contain several 100 different aromatic substances. In coffee, for example, there are about 700.
Flavoring substances in food
The fact that isolated flavoring substances are added to many processed foods may have several reasons:
- Flavors lost during food processing should be replaced.
- Many different flavors should be offered, especially in ready-made products, snacks, sugar confectionery, ice cream and soft drinks.
- Diet foods such as calorie-reduced products should taste as good as their “normal” counterparts.
- The (branded) product should always have the same quality and taste, regardless of the batch.
Flavors enhance the taste experience
As a rule, flavors are dosed in foods in a ratio of 1:1000. In many finished products and due to the nature of production, their use is often unavoidable because the desired taste experience can not be achieved with the ingredients alone.
Take fruit yogurt, for example: as aromatic as fresh strawberries taste, even a 15 percent proportion in yogurt does not taste particularly intense because pasteurization and storage impair the flavor. Here, natural flavorings are used to achieve a better aroma. In other products, flavorings completely replace the ingredient.
How much nature is in it?
The flavor regulation distinguishes between different types of flavorings. The most important are natural, nature-identical and artificial flavorings:
- In the case of natural flavors, the starting material must be of plant or animal origin. With physical or biological processes, for example, the vanilla flavor is extracted from the vanilla bean.
- Nature-identical flavoring substances are produced synthetically and are identical in chemical structure to the natural flavor. An example is the vanillin. Nature-identical flavors are often composed of several individual substances and are particularly intense in taste.
- Artificial flavorings are odor or flavor substances obtained by chemical synthesis, but do not occur in nature such as ethyl vanillin. In Germany, only 18 artificial flavors are approved, such as for fizzy drinks, puddings, baked goods and sugar confectionery.
If aroma is on it
The indication “flavor” in the list of ingredients indicates nature-identical or artificial flavors. When labeled “natural flavor”, the flavor must be exclusively of natural origin. However, a natural flavor that tastes like raspberries, for example, is in most cases made from cedar. Only with a more specific description such as “strawberry flavoring” must the flavoring come from strawberries.
