“It is our duty to train and discipline the body in order that we shall render to the Master the highest possible service. Inclination must not control us. We are not to pamper the appetite and indulge in the use of that which is not for our good. . . . We must use the intelligence that God has given in order that we may be perfect in body, soul, and spirit, that we may have a symmetrical character, a well-balanced mind, and do perfect work for the Master.” –Our Father Cares, p. 108
Foods are naturally flavoured, and our bodies are made to seek out foods that taste delicious to us. Since creation, the flavour of food also gave our bodies crucial information about the nutrition contained in the food. Different flavoured foods provide different nutrients. For example, strong-smelling foods such as broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and kale are foods that are high in fibre, vitamins A, C, and K, and possess sulfur-containing compounds called glucosinolates, which have been shown to have cancer-fighting properties. Tangy-smelling citrus fruits are high in Vitamin C and sugars. The sweet smell of bananas is high in potassium. According to Fred Provenza, a behavioral ecologist states, “Flavour is the body’s way of identifying important nutrients and remembering what foods they come from.”
Flavour is the combination of the smell and taste of the food. When we think of a specific food we have eaten in the past, we can recall the smell and taste readily. The flavour of our food is also a strong determinant in the food choices that we make. We all have our own preference for certain tastes, and thus are drawn to specific foods for that reason. Also, think of the type of foods that you avoid eating. What is the main reason for avoiding a certain food, even if it is a food that is part of your specific diet? It typically comes down to taste, i.e. the taste is not appealing to us.
A group of chemicals known as volatile chemicals are naturally present in many foods, and they help determine the taste of the food. Over 7,000 of these chemicals have been identified. Volatile chemicals have particular smells; the importance of this is because smell makes up to 90% of the sense of taste in a food. In processed foods, this mixture of chemicals is known as “flavour”. Often the flavour of a food product can made up of more than 100 chemicals. To add flavour to food is less than a cent per serving, but annual sales of flavours in the United States alone is approximately $24 billion. Americans are consuming more than 600 million pounds of artificial flavourings per year. It is big business. Why?
In order to increase yields of crops and livestock, farming practices have changed. Produce is often picked before it is ripe so that it can be shipped over long distances without spoiling. When produce is not allowed to ripen naturally, it loses taste and can be bland. Genetic selection, which is also used to increase yields has resulted in a loss of natural flavour intensity. Think of the tomatoes that are in grocery stores in the middle of the winter; often people say they taste like “cardboard”. And as flavour diminishes, so does nutrition. An average non-organic tomato today has half as much calcium and vitamin A as a tomato had in the 1950s.
At the same time that whole foods are becoming more bland, the food manufacturers have determined that the flavouring of processed foods by chemical means is necessary to enhance their appeal, thus driving people to eat foods that are less bland than their natural counterparts. Flavouring is found in most processed foods. A database called the “Food Score Database”, created to help identify flavours in foods, lists over 80,000 food products that contain added flavours. In fact, “natural flavour” is the fourth most common ingredient, after water, salt, and sugar. When making food choices, taste is overwhelmingly the top reason for choosing one food over another, as shown in a recent survey: 84% of Americans say that taste is the main reason for making a food purchase. Flavour is the combination of smell and taste. Not only does a food need to taste good, it also must smell good to be appealing.
When chemicals are added to food products to enhance flavour, it is for four main reasons:
- Flavours enhance or modify flavours that are already present in the food. Packaged foods are flavoured to increase sales by enhancing the flavour, often making these foods taste stronger than a comparable natural food. Thus people purchase the enhanced flavour product over a natural food that does not have as bold a taste. The taste is also manufactured to last only a short time, encouraging people to eat more of the product to continue to enjoy the taste. In an interview in 2011, two flavour scientists admitted that one of their goals is to make food products addictive so that people continue to buy their products.
- Many chemical changes occur during the processing, packaging and storage of food. All these chemical changes lead to the degradation of the quality of the food product, affecting the colour, flavour, texture, taste and overall acceptability. Chemicals need to be added to food products to improve the qualities that have been lost during processing to make the food product acceptable to the consumer. An effect of processing can produce off-flavours, which are flavours that are not natural, are atypical (not expected), or not up to standard. Even though a food with an off-flavour is often not a safety risk to the consumer, the perception is that the food is of low quality, and can be costly to the food manufacturer due to people avoiding purchasing the food product. Added flavours are used to mask off-flavours.
- Most people enjoy food with a strong taste. Often the processing of food removes flavour and without adding back flavour, the food would taste bland. Therefore adding flavour increases the acceptance and appeal of otherwise bland foods. When foods are pasteurized for safety, many of the chemicals that provide flavour or give odour to food evaporate. To make a product taste as we would expect it to taste after the process of pasteurization, these chemicals have to be restored, and they are done so artificially. Often this purpose of the process is to make food taste “fresh”, tricking our taste buds into thinking we are consuming a natural product.
- Flavouring also gives a food product its identity. Adding a flavour provides consistency of taste from batch to batch. Flavours are added so that the food product tastes as we expect it to taste. For example, we expect a food that is labelled as “strawberry… ” to taste like strawberries; flavouring is added so that the food meets our flavour expectations, without the cost of using real strawberries. When consumers get used to a product tasting a certain way, changing the flavour could potentially cause consumers to stop buying that specific product.
Hence, the ingredient list of many foods may contain either “natural flavours” or “artificial flavours” to enhance their appeal. A natural flavour is more expensive than an artificial flavour; however, food manufacturers will often use natural flavours as consumers prefer natural flavours in their food.
History of Food Flavouring
Flavouring has always been a part of food preparation. Throughout history, food was flavoured by spices and herbs to make it taste better. In fact, the discovery of North America was due to Christopher Columbus searching for a faster route to the Orient in order to access Eastern spice sources.
Artificial flavouring had its beginnings in the 1870s when a German chemist discovered that he could produce a substance from pinecones that replicated the flavour of vanilla. He named the substance “vanillin.” Vanilla itself is very expensive, but with the use of the common and cheap pinecone, the flavour of vanilla could be enjoyed without the cost and transportation from an exotic country. Since that time, flavouring has become a science of its own, and “flavourists” have created thousands of flavour compounds.
Even now, vanillin is used as a cheaper flavour substitute for vanilla; it can be found in bottles in the grocery store in the same section as vanilla. It is also commonly used by food manufacturers to reduce production costs. And, unlike real vanilla extract which is produced from real vanilla beans, vanillin is synthetic and is produced using petrochemicals and byproducts from the paper
industry. Because vanillin is cheap, it is widely used in beverages and snack foods. Some people can develop headaches or allergic reactions to vanillin.
Besides the discovery of ways to create common flavours from natural or chemical substances, was the discovery of umami. This flavour provided the sense of savoury flavour that one gets from eating meat or cheese. It was discovered by a Japanese chemist who extracted an edible form of glutamic acid from seaweed. Most of you reading this article will recognize the extract known as monosodium glutamate, or MSG for short. MSG has a long history of controversy, yet it is still widely used in processed foods to enhance flavour. (The next issue will address MSG in more detail).
Artificial and natural flavours in food
In Canada, the addition of flavours to food is regulated by the Canada Food and Drug Act. In the United States, the addition of a flavour to a food product must be one of the 1,300 FDA-allowed flavouring chemicals or food additives considered “generally recognized as safe” or GRAS, or any of another 2,000 chemicals that are not directly regulated by the FDA, but is allowed by the Flavour and Extract Manufacturers Association of the United States (FEMA). These chemicals can either be artificial or natural.
The term “artificial” refers to something produced to imitate nature. When an artificial flavour is added to a food, the word “artificial” or “imitation” must be included on the ingredient list as part of the actual flavouring preparation name. The definition of an artificial flavour is a substance “prepared for [its] flavouring properties and derived in whole or in part from components obtained by chemical synthesis.” In other words, an artificial flavour is an ingredient that is completely manufactured by a chemist. The flavour is not related in any way to the actual food it claims to taste like.
Added natural flavours are not much better than artificial flavours. They still are made in a chemistry lab; however, the initial ingredient must be “natural”, meaning it is derived from “meat, fish, poultry, eggs, dairy products, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herbs, spices, bark, buds, roots, leaves, or other plant material.” However, the final product is highly processed to create the flavour compound. Again, the final product does not resemble the original food in any way, including its taste.
Therefore, if a manufacturer wants to enhance the flavour of a product, they have the option to use a natural flavour source or an artificial flavour source. Either will produce the flavour required, but the labels would either indicate “natural” or “artificial” as the source of the flavour. One is a derivative of a natural product; the other is purely chemical in nature. The choice often depends on cost or availability. Often the chemical make-up of the natural flavour is no different than the artificial flavour.
The US Food and Drug Administration allows artificial flavourings if they are used in the minimum quantity necessary that is required to produce their intended effect; and they must be included in the list of “flavouring substances and adjuvants generally recognized as safe in food.” The list contains chemical names that most of us would not recognize, e.g. Benzyl acetoacetate; Cinnamyl phenylacetate; Ethyl cyclohexanepropionate; Geranyl acetone; 6,10-dimethyl 5,9-undecadien-2-one; and Tributyl acetylcitrate. The list contains thousands of these chemicals, all hidden under the ingredient called “flavour” on our food products. In the United States, the reason that the FDA does not require flavour companies to disclose the ingredients in their flavours is in order to protect their proprietary formulas, i.e. flavours owned by them. The only criterion that must be met is that the chemicals are safe for human consumption; determination of safety is also the responsibility of the flavour company, as the FDA does not do its own studies to test the safety of these chemicals.
Artificial flavours are known to cause many adverse reactions, including: Allergic reactions, chest pain, DNA damage, fatigue, headaches, depression of the nervous system, seizures, nausea, dizziness, brain damage and more. Because food labels do not need to list the specific ingredients in artificial flavors, identifying the root cause of these varying symptoms is nearly impossible.
FEMA, which was founded in 1909, also works to ensure the safety of flavour additives to food. Their mission is “universal acceptance of the value of flavourings.” It is comprised of flavour manufacturers, flavour users, flavour ingredient suppliers, and others with an interest in the U.S. flavour industry. FEMA is committed to assuring a substantial supply of safe flavoring substances. FEMA uses the designation of FEMA GRAS in identifying flavouring products that are “Generally Recognized as Safe”. However, there are items that have been previously been designated as GRAS, and have been later removed from the list. Again, when chemical additives are used in food, their long term safety is not always known until they have been used for some time. And, when we consider that our bodies were created in the image of God, and our diet was originally based on eating whole foods found in nature, what is the effect on our health of regularly ingesting chemicals?
Flavor DB is a database which comprises 25595 flavour molecules representing an array of tastes and odours. Among these, 2254 molecules are associated with 936 natural ingredients. There are also almost 14,000 synthetic or artificial flavours. For example, the common plant, purslane, which grows in many lawns has 95 different “flavour molecules” that are derived from its various compounds. To create a specific flavour, the molecule is isolated and processed. Purslane derivatives are used to produce the following flavours: butter, caramel, peppermint, almond, peanut, banana, apple, mushroom, and dozens of others. The flavours may be considered natural as they are derived from a plant, but the flavour does not resemble the original plant in any way. Also included are flavour and odour categories such as bitter, sweet, sour, salty, and umami. The smell of food is closely connected to its taste, and therefore many molecules are used for their odour in addition to their taste.
And, if one craves a plant with a specific flavour because of a nutritional deficiency, eating a food product that has the flavour one craves will not contain the nutrition that comes from the plant. For example, craving an apple and eating a product that it made to taste like an apple using a miniscule molecule derived from a plant such as purslane will not contain the nutritional content of an actual apple. Thus, our body is deprived of the necessary nutrients that an apple contains when ingesting a product that contains “natural apple flavouring”.
If one wishes to adhere to a vegetarian or vegan diet, it is often difficult to know if a natural flavour is derived from a plant or an animal source. For example, Swiss cheese has flavour molecules that produce flavours such as: orange, strawberry, coconut, melon, pear, cabbage, lemon and cucumber—all are plant flavours but are produced from a dairy product
What is natural?
When we crave a certain food, the craving is often associated with a deficit in our body of a certain nutrient. Hence, we crave foods that contain that nutrient. And, many times it is the flavour that drives our craving. For example, if our body craves the flavour of an orange, it is because we crave something contained in the orange—whether it is Vitamin C, fibre, or sugar. This innate system of associating flavour with nutrition has worked to keep us healthy since creation.
But, for the last hundred years or so, our bodies have been fooled by artificially-produced flavours. What happens when we crave the flavour for something, and the flavour has been chemically manufactured, and the nutrients that we crave are not actually contained in the artificially-flavoured product? In our mind, we are consuming something that is good for us. But, our bodies are put in a state of malnutrition by eating foods that taste like they should contain certain nutrients, but they are totally devoid of those nutrients. Some surmise that this is the reason for epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and other food-related illnesses.
Our bodies were created to crave delicious food, not only for its flavour but for the nutrition that the food provides. And when food is eaten in its natural form, the foods that we find flavourful also come with the nutrition we need. Eating natural, whole foods are foods with only one ingredient. As soon as you eat a food product that contains more than one ingredient, the question becomes, has this food been chemically engineered to taste the way it does? Look to the ingredient list and if you find an “artificial flavour” or “natural flavour” on the list, know that the taste of the food has been chemically produced, and is also deficient in the nutrients associated with the added flavours.
In Eden, man was provided with the perfect diet in order to maintain perfect health; and God ensured that the food was tasty, flavourful and nutritious. In natural foods, each different type of flavour contains different nutrients, so God gave man a variety of foods; and to ensure that man would have all their nutritional needs met by eating a large selection of different foods, each one tasted delicious. “The many lofty trees were laden with fruit of every kind and of delicious flavor, adapted to please the taste and meet the wants of the happy Adam and Eve.” –To Be Like Jesus, p. 229.