Revealed: The science behind food flavours
In our everyday meals, we enjoy a wide range of flavours. Ever wondered how we experience so many food flavours using the very same tongue? Our tongue can detect five unique flavours: savoriness, saltiness, sweetness, sourness, and bitterness. However, did you know that 80% of these tastes you perceive are due to their smell and other flavour components derived from the food's aroma? Yes, your nose plays a huge role in how tasty you find your food!
This is why natural and synthetic flavouring chemicals are employed to change the aroma of food in restaurants and packaged ones. Flavours, natural or artificial, are dozens or hundreds of interacting chemicals that create a unique taste in foods we eat. For instance, tea gets its flavour from 47 different chemical compounds, whereas coffee's flavour comes from 100 chemicals. However, certain flavours have a dominant key chemical element that, even when present alone, imparts a dish with its distinctive flavour. Let’s find out more about the science of flavour.
What are natural flavours?
When we read the word ‘natural flavours,’ we may think that the food is chemical-free! Well, it seems we are totally off track. Chemicals are present in both natural and artificial flavours, but the distinguishing factor between the two is the source of extraction. Natural flavours come from anything edible, from plant or animal sources. However, these edibles undergo processing to produce the flavours we all love.
Natural flavours are obtained by heating or roasting natural products such as spices, herbs, barks, buds, roots, leaves, vegetable juice, fruit juice, dairy derivatives, egg, poultry, seafood, and meat. In contrast, artificial flavours are made from petroleum and other inedible materials, in the food laboratories. However, being the fourth common ingredient on most food labels, it's important to understand that natural flavours enhance the aroma and fragrance in culinary dishes but rarely add any nutritional value to them.
Explained: Natural identical flavours
These are neither natural nor artificial flavours. Confused? Let's make it easy for you. Identical natural flavours are chemicals synthesized or extracted from an aromatic source with the same chemical composition as the natural compound that is being aimed to mimic. For example, instead of vanilla beans (natural flavouring substance) vanilla wood pulp is used as identical natural vanilla in food products to replicate the natural vanilla flavour. They are not artificial. Instead, they are "naturally identical" to the aromatic compounds found in vanilla beans. Natural identical flavourings are biologically equivalent to those found in edibles but are extracted through special chemical methods like esterification or acetylation.
Artificial flavouring substances
Chemically different and processed from totally inedible items like petroleum, artificial flavours are chemical mixtures that taste and smell like natural flavours. Let’s take the example of vanilla again. Natural vanilla flavour is extracted from vanilla beans and later diluted with alcohol. Anisaldehyde, hydroxybenzoic acid, hydroxybenzaldehyde, and over 200 other chemical compounds are combined to give this exact vanilla flavour, but it's entirely made in a lab! The few key chemical compounds that give vanilla its taste and flavour are synthesized in a lab and then diluted with alcohol to generate the artificial vanilla flavour.
Most commercial flavouring agents are artificial ones. Alcohols, esters, ketones, pyrazines, phenolics, and terpenoids are the most often utilized chemicals to create various flavours. So now you know where all the yummy taste in your packed foods is coming from!