Hey everybody, I'm Ben.
And today's question is, how
to artificial flavors work?
Many of the processed
foods that we buy today
come with an ingredient label
that lists artificial flavors
as one of the key ingredients.
Artificial flavors are
simply chemical mixtures
that mimic a natural
flavor in some way.
Anything that we
smell has to contain
some sort of volatile chemical.
The chemical that evaporates
and enters a person's nose.
The evaporated chemical
comes in contact
with the sensory cells in the
nose and it activates them.
So in the case of
taste, a chemical
has to activate the taste buds.
Taste is actually
kind of a crude sense.
It's not the most
sophisticated of our abilities.
There are only four
values that you can really
register on your tongue.
It's sweet, salty,
sour, and bitter.
And the nose however, can sense
thousands of different odors.
Therefore, most
artificial flavors
have both a taste and
a smell component.
Any natural flavor is
usually really complex.
It's got dozens or even hundreds
of chemicals interacting
to create a unique
taste slash smell.
As it turns out, many flavors
particularly flavors of fruit,
have just one or maybe a few
dominant chemical components
that carry the bulk of
this taste, smell signal.
Many of these chemicals
are called esters.
For example, the ester
called octaacetate
is a fundamental component
in orange flavor.
The ester called, isomylacetate
is a fundamental component
of the banana flavor.
If you add these
esters to a product,
the product will taste to
varying degrees like an orange
or like a banana.
To make more
realistic flavors, you
add other chemicals in
the correct portions
to get closer, and closer,
and closer, and closer
to the real thing.
And it's interesting
that they normally
mix to create known tastes.
People make artificial grape,
cherry, orange, banana,
apple, et cetera.
But it's very rare
to mix up something
that no one has
ever tasted before.
However, this can and
does occasionally happen.
Juicy fruit gum.
If you ever tried juicy fruit
gum and you've wondered,
what is that taste?
It's a made up.
There's no like juicy
fruit fruit at all.
It's just the gum.
And as a lot of people will
probably point out and notice,
these artificial flavors don't
always coincide one to one
with the flavor of
the actual thing.
A lot of people
might love grapes,
but hate grape
flavored candy or soda.
And that's it, that's how
artificial flavors work.
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