They are found in almost every product. But not all are alike useful or, conversely, harmful.
Ketchup and mustard, sausage and bread, fruit yogurt or tea, juice and even more crunches or chips – they all unite them. Flavors. It would seem, why add them at all? But sometimes you can’t do without them – during the production process, the products lose their natural aroma, you have to “increase the supply”. And they do it in different ways. What – tell the specialists of the Nestea company.
Fragrances are natural, identical to natural and artificial.
Natural flavors obtained from plants, fruits or berries. It can be squeezed and concentrated juice, zest, dry powder, or crushed and fermented raw materials.
“For example, the production of cold tea. We use only aromas extracted from real berries and fruits. Wild berries, raspberries, peaches, lemon – each of the tastes is conventionally divided into two parts: one is entirely used to extract natural smells (future aromatics), and the second is used to prepare the corresponding syrup. Then berries and fruits are found in the drink again, ”experts say.
Production with natural aromatics requires high-tech and very expensive production lines that do not use any chemical components. In addition, such ingredients are very capricious during production: the slightest nuance during processing or overheating by a couple of degrees – and the aroma disappeared, and the whole batch was rejected. Therefore, companies often resort to the second type of flavoring: identical to natural.
This type of flavoring, by the way, is not used in Europe and the USA, they have a clear division into natural and artificial. And here it is described by GOST R 52464-2005: a food flavoring, the taste and aroma of which occurs in nature, but contains one or more substances identical to natural ones. This flavor is mostly artificial.
What can be included in the “chemical” part of such a flavor? Vanillin is a classic example. Natural vanilla is difficult to grow and process, therefore it is very expensive and is used in expensive products. But the smell of vanilla is very popular, so in chemical laboratories they get “a flavor identical to natural, vanillin.” It costs several times less and is consumed much more economically. Other flavors that are identical to natural ones are the aromas of cheese, butter, mustard and horseradish.
Many yoghurts also add natural-identical flavors. Russian GOST allows adding the word “natural” to the name only because such smells theoretically occur in nature. But in fact, this is a cheaper and less safe production. It is impossible to say what exactly is hidden behind the inscription “flavor identical to natural”.
And the last type of supplements – artificial flavors… These are flavoring compounds obtained in the laboratory by chemical means. Usually, the tastes and aromas of products prepared with the use of such substances have no analogues in nature – this is the fundamental difference between “artificial” and “identical to natural”. Synthetic is the smell of chewing gum or grapes – you must have come across bright purple grape drinks and wondered who decided that grapes smell like that. Artificial flavors are synthesized from chemical compounds that mimic natural aromas.
It is difficult to say unequivocally whether flavors are harm or good. Of course, the chemical compounds that make up artificial flavors should be treated with doubt. They have to go through rigorous testing, sometimes even more sophisticated than natural flavors. Building a flavor from the ground up meant that each component had to pass a safety test and be approved for use. It turns out that if a product appears in a store, it means that its composition is completely safe – if the manufacturer does not cheat.
“Many doctors fear that the effect of using artificial flavors with food and drinks accumulates and the negative consequences may appear years later. A number of artificial additives have been linked to cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, chronic fatigue syndrome and depression. Some artificial flavors, such as raspberries, strawberries, pineapple, can cause allergies, eczema, dermatitis, and even asthma. It is also possible that artificial flavors negatively affect the immune system, reducing the body’s defenses. Children should be especially careful with such chemistry, ”explains Dmitry Lutov, technologist, commercial director of Lipetskaya Rosinka company, producer and distributor of Nestea cold tea in Russia.
The difficulty with flavors is that, unlike other additives, they do not have separate names, they are not denoted by the letters E, as, for example, dyes. The packaging simply indicates the presence and type of flavor in the product. The full composition of artificial flavors is unknown to the buyer. No one will print the chemical formula of a flavor identical to the natural one either.
It turns out that you can completely trust only natural flavors. According to Russian and world legislation, this term can be used only if it contains exclusively natural substances. Usually, the words “natural” are followed by the name of the source of the scent, for example, “natural flavor (lemon)” in iced tea. This means that the ingredients in the flavor were sourced from real lemons.
But you need to understand that the cost of such a product or drink will be more expensive than chemical analogues.