Flavor Flav!

Evidence points to the development of the human sense of taste as a mechanism to avoid being poisoned. How strange then that every day we are fooled into eating a substance that poisons ourselves and our planet, namely, oil.

Human taste buds can generally detect about half a dozen basic flavors including sweet, sour, salty, bitter, astringent, and the less well known umami (a Japanese word for “tasty” or “brothy”, it signifies the rich taste of amino acids in meat, shellfish, mushrooms, etc.). When compared to the sense of smell, however, taste is very limited. What we perceive as “flavor” is in fact primarily composed of the aroma being released by what’s in our mouth. Smell is responsible for about 90 percent of a food’s taste. The human nose can detect smells present in quantities as tiny as parts per trillion (equivalent to about 0.000000000003 percent). Smell is also inextricably linked to memory. Food manufacturers capitalize on this fact, creating “comfort food” flavors that illicit childhood or happy memories.

The flavoring industry appeared on the scene in the mid-nineteenth century, hand in hand with processed foods. The early food processors looked to the established perfume houses of Europe for their first food additives. Germany took the early lead in flavor production, thanks to its powerful chemical industry. German scientists were said to have discovered artificial flavors by accidently creating methyl anthranilate (which happens to be the chief grape flavor in Kool-Aid). Post World War II, the flavoring industry found its way to the U.S., settling snuggly in beside the great fashion houses in New York City, and later expanding into New Jersey. The American flavor industry now boasts an annual revenue of over $1.4 billion. Every year in the U.S. approximately 10,000 new additive-heavy, processed foods are introduced to consumers.

Today the flavoring industry has become incredibly precise and complex. Flavor houses guard their secrets like jealous lovers, and the flavorists they employ must be part skilled chemist, part inspired artist. Like wine, flavors have a “top note” generally followed by a “dry-down” and a “leveling-out.” Flavorists even concern themselves with the “mouth feel” of food. Different chemicals are responsible for each stage of a flavor. Some of the more complex aromas, such as that of coffee or cooking meat, consist of volatile gases from upwards of a thousand different chemicals. The simple smell of strawberry is created through the interaction of over 350 chemicals. Despite all their complexity, flavor additives generally appear at the tail end of ingredient lists and often cost less than the food’s packaging. This is because flavor additives are present in miniscule quantities. As an example, the dominant flavor of a bell pepper can be detected by the human tongue in quantities as low as 0.02 parts per billion.

The difference between artificial and natural flavors is somewhat arbitrary and not a little absurd, based more on how the flavor is made rather than on what it contains. A natural flavor is created by extracting the flavorant from the source (like a pineapple say), through a process which can involve either solvents, distillation, or methods of brute force. The extract is then typically purified before being added to food products. An artificial flavor is often chemically identical to a natural flavor, but has been manufactured rather than extracted. To create it, the flavorist must isolate and mix together naturally occurring aromatic chemicals, or create a novel chemical compound that possess the desired flavor (bionic pineapple!).

The upshot of all this, is that it’s hard for a consumer to know what they are getting. A natural flavor isn’t necessarily better for you than an artificial one. The classic example is almond flavor or benzaldehyde. When derived from natural sources, like peach and apricot pits, it contains traces of hydrogen cyanide, a deadly poison. Artificially derived benzaldehyde, manufactured by mixing clove oil and amyl acetate does not contain cyanide. The FDA doesn’t require companies to disclose the secret recipes of their flavor or color additives, provided the chemicals in them are those considered by the agency to be “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS). While this might not be cause for panic, it allows some pretty strange things to get into our mouths. As an example, you might be interested to know the disturbing origins of red food coloring. One of the widely used red, pink, purple, and orange colorings is cochineal extract, often appearing on a label as “carmine” or “carminic acid.” It is made from the dehydrated bodies of female Dactylopius coccus and their unhatched larvae, a small insect that feeds on red cactus berries. These insects are farmed, collected, killed by immersion in hot water, dried, ground into pigment, and shipped to your local grocery store where they can be found in food products ranging from strawberry yogurt, to fruit fillings, to pink grapefruit juice. Bon appetite.

But what’s even more troubling than ground up bugs in our food is the oil. And I’m not talking about canola. Because of the high cost of natural extraction, almost every artificial flavor is produced from petroleum. These flavors often have more ingredients than the food they’re going into.

There is a solution with all the warm and fuzzy connotations of natural flavors, the price advantage of artificial flavors, and best of all without the use of oil. Some of the most groundbreaking advances in flavor manufacturing are now taking place in the field of biotechnology. Complex flavors are being made through enzymatic reactions, fermentation, and fungal cultures. World, meet USDA bioderived flavors. This new classification of flavor is derived from organic sources and has the same chemical profile as naturally occurring flavors without the prohibitive cost associations.

Here at Blue Marble we are using naturally occurring bacteria in specifically formulated cultures to produce our biochemicals for use in these bioderived flavors. Because all our biochemicals come from organic feedstocks they fit nicely into this category. Thanks to the quickly growing market for drop-in alternatives like these, we can decrease our dependence on oil one bite at a time.