How to deceive the sense of smell or food flavors identical to natural: what are they made of and what is it? What are natural flavors.

What delicious food!

Sometimes it seems that strawberry cake better the berry itself.

But it's just flavoring.

In their molecular structure, they are similar to natural products, but obtained by chemical means.

Identical natural ones, although they smell seductive, but with excessive use seriously harm your health.

natural vanillin very expensive product. Therefore, flavors have become a profitable solution for production. Natural is harmless, in some cases even useful(for heart disease, the fight against fatigue).

But in artificial vanillin there are harmful elements. They destroy the liver. Moreover, when copying the formula of real vanilla, useful properties do not pass. The cost for 10 mg is about 60 rubles.

Flavoring identical to natural strawberry cheaper compared to vanilla.

1 kg costs about 50 rubles.

It's the same allergen like vanilla.

If you stop following the diet, then it is the kids who can get poisoned.

Strawberries are very popular with the growing generation. Therefore, manufacturers put it in the product at every opportunity. The result is a rash, digestive upset and allergies.

How to protect yourself?

The only sure way is exclude flavors from the diet. It's practically impossible. You always want to have a snack on "harmful" food. That's why follow the advice:

1. eat food from your garden grown in a verified location.
2. Prepare food by yourself. Exclude fast food and fast food.
3. Buy tagged products "natural flavors".

Food with artificial elements changes the body at the cellular level, provokes the development of diseases. Liver, heart, stomach suffer. At pregnant women the fetus develops with pathologies. remember, that children It is strictly forbidden to use artificial flavors.

Manufacturers hide with fine print, incomplete product information. Be more attentively. Don't let yourself be fooled.

Are flavors identical to natural, you can find out by watching the video:

Flavorings are widely present in food products in our time. They are added everywhere, which can be read on the product packaging. Their purpose is also known to everyone. They are needed to improve the taste and aroma of food. But there are some facts that many consumers are unaware of. For example, food flavorings must not be used to change the taste of a spoiled product.

In the event that a product with dubious external data fell into your hands, you should be wary. Everyone is used to the fact that rotten fish, meat and other products have a characteristic smell, but sometimes manufacturers cheat for the sake of material gain. Natural identical flavors are those that are chemically obtained. Thanks to them, it became possible to manufacture an analogue of red caviar, which is several times cheaper than the real one. It smells exactly the same as the original, the taste is the same. Only such a product is zero. It does not contain vitamins and minerals. Everything would be fine, but there are side effects that cause identical natural flavors.

Harm to health

Most of all, natural-identical flavors are dangerous for children. When ingested by a child, they cause disturbances in the functioning of the nervous system, which sometimes become irreversible. An adult suffers from their use no less. People pay for the taste and smell of the product with a rapid heartbeat, weakening of the whole organism. With the abuse of modified food, a person does not see a negative effect immediately. Only gradually begin to make themselves felt affected

Flavors identical to natural. Why are people afraid of them?

When going to the store, units pay attention to the packaging of the product. More precisely, what is written on it in small letters. For many, this makes it difficult to see the names of all the ingredients. Manufacturers do No one will take a magnifying glass with them to the store. The results of population surveys on the topic of harm caused to health by flavors identical to natural ones are different. Most often, people believe that they can harm the body and influence the occurrence of genetic deformities in newborns. However, this fact has not been confirmed by scientists, but no one has yet refuted.

There is an easy way to avoid eating unhealthy foods. Look for the label "natural flavors" on the packaging. This will ensure that the product is of the highest quality and safest. In addition, it is better to eat homemade food, and not in fast food restaurants. You will have to remember all the grandmother's recipes and learn how to cook deliciously. Seasonings need to be bought only of plant origin in crushed form. If you see the inscription on the package: “monosodium glutamate”, then you should refuse to buy such a product. These rules are extremely simple. Remember: a couple of minutes spent studying the composition of the product can save your health for many years.

Most of us believe that natural flavors are better than synthetic (artificial) flavors, since the latter contain a lot of chemicals. Is it really?

Let's try to clarify this issue.

The Food and Drug Administration describes a natural flavor as follows: “A natural flavor is: an essential oil, essence, extract, or product obtained by distillation, roasting, heating, or decomposition into enzymes. Flavor has flavors derived from spices, fruits, vegetables or their juice, herbs, roots or leaves, and other plant products. Flavoring qualities can also be obtained from meat, seafood, eggs, dairy products, as well as from their enzymes.

The definition of a synthetic flavor is shorter - a synthetic flavor is any substance that does not fit the description of a natural flavor.

In fact, everything that we eat, that we feel, everything that surrounds us - all this consists of chemicals. Whether they are natural or lab-created, it doesn't matter.

Mankind has learned to use flavors for a long time. Various herbs and spices have been cultivated and used in cooking as early as 5,000 BC. But the first flavors were not intended to improve the taste of food, but rather to worsen it. These sacrifices had to be made in order to preserve the product in an era without refrigeration.

Later, with the development of cooking, people got used to the unnatural taste of foods, and various natural flavors in the form of spices and spices became highly valued. The power of entire empires was built on the cultivation and trade of natural flavors.

But what is natural flavoring? Where does the smell of flowers and plants come from? It seems to us that nature specially created the wonderful aromas of fruits, vegetables, berries in order to attract us and teach a person to consume them. Actually it is not. The so-called "fragrances" synthesized by plants serve other purposes. And often they are just designed to scare away a potential enemy so that the plant is not eaten. That is why the most fragrant parts of plants are its most valuable parts: seeds and fruits.

Some of the substances that we traditionally take for the aroma of natural tasty and healthy products are not present at all in the plant. For example, vanillin, as a chemical compound, is not contained in the pods of a well-known orchid. The fruits synthesize the so-called "glucovanillin" - a glycoside, the main function of which is to protect the plant from being eaten by pests. It is already we humans who have learned to ferment the pods, destroy the glycoside and obtain a fragrant substance as a result of a chemical reaction. Dry mustard powder, like the plant from whose seeds it is obtained, does not have a strong smell of table seasoning at all for the same reason - the plant does not contain the substance responsible for this smell. Allyl isothiocyanate, namely, it is a tool of retribution for physically defenseless mustard, begins to form under the action of the myrosinase enzyme from glycosinolate at the time of damage to plant tissues, and is intended to cause maximum damage to the pest.

All flavors contain chemicals - both artificial and natural. The difference between them is only the source of these chemicals. Natural flavors are created on the basis of products of animal or vegetable origin. Even processing in the laboratory does not detract from the fact that they are natural. Artificial flavors are created from something inedible, not alive.

Any fragrance, natural or synthetic, is a mixture of aromatic substances. They are the same substances. The difference is that if plants synthesize these substances to interact with other organisms, then we - to add to food. For the same purpose, for which we add bay leaves to the soup, and coriander seeds to Borodino bread. And if in a natural plant we have an unpredictable composition of this mixture, then in the case of an artificially prepared mixture, we know exactly how much and what components we put in, what they will turn into during storage, how they will affect the body and we can guarantee their safety.

Numerous "experts" like to tell horror stories about the dangers of synthetic flavors, but is it really so? No matter how harmful and incomprehensible the process of creating and producing flavors would seem to the average person, it is based on serious science. You can list the Nobel Prizes for work in the field of chemical synthesis and physiology for a long time. In 2006, Japanese scientist Mayu Yamamoto came up with a way to extract vanillin extract from cow feed. For this, she received the Ig Nobel Prize at Harvard University.

What many people don't realize is that there can be just as many chemicals in natural flavors as artificial flavors. For example, the amount of chemicals used to create artificial strawberry flavor is equal to the amount of chemicals in fresh strawberries.

Some natural flavors are much more dangerous than their artificial counterparts. For example, naturally occurring almond flavor can contain traces of cyanide. And the raw soybeans that soy sauce is made from can also be toxic.

There is an opinion that synthetic flavors can be harmful, as they can contain impurities, because the production of ultrapure substances is a very expensive process. This is a completely wrong statement of the problem. It's not about whether there are impurities, of course they are. It is important to determine whether they may or may not harm human health. Of course, not only opponents of food chemistry are thinking about this, seeking to convey the terrible truth to the public.

Modern methods of synthesis make it possible not only to obtain fragrant substances selectively and in high yields (as a rule, these are simple molecules), but also to control the composition of impurities. These impurities are very hard to harm, and this has been proven. Complex molecules, the synthesis of which is difficult, are now increasingly purposefully produced by biotechnological methods.

Artificially created flavors are much more thoroughly tested than natural ones. But this fact can be considered only an argument in their favor. After all, creating a flavoring from scratch ensures that each of its components has passed the safety test and has been approved for use.

The problem with the artificial production of flavors is that there is no problem. The rejection of synthetic flavors, the opposition to "natural" flavors is more of a psychological problem, caused by a lack of information and acquired fears of clever "chemical" words. Invite a person to add salt to his food, and he will gladly do it. But he disdainfully disowns the proposal to add sodium chlorine to his dinner.

According to our research department, the precise definition of natural flavors and flavors contained in Section 21, Section 101, Part 22 of the US Code of Federal Regulations is:

“The terms “natural flavor” and “natural flavor” mean essential oil, oleoresin (turpentine), essence or extract, protein hydrolyzate, distillate or any product of calcination, heating or enzymolysis (enzymatic decomposition of substances) that contains flavoring elements extracted from spices, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, nutritional yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, and from meat, seaweed, game, eggs, dairy products or fermented products. All these additional components give the main ingredients a specific taste or aroma, but have no nutritional value.

In other words, any product whose use is officially approved can be considered as a natural flavor. In fact, it's impossible to tell exactly what is in a particular natural flavor unless the company that makes the product lists the ingredients on the label. These days, some vegetarian and vegan companies do this, but not the vast majority of food manufacturers.

Why do companies "hide" ingredients under the label "natural flavors"? This approach is seen as a way to preserve the identity and unique character of the product. It's kind of like a "secret recipe" - the producers are afraid that if people find out exactly what the ingredients are, someone might be able to copy the product.

So what are vegetarians to do? Call the company? Ask what is in the flavors? It is possible that they will not be able or will not want to provide this information. But! The more often they hear this question, the more urgent it becomes for them to put an explanatory inscription on the label. In some cases, this tactic is effective (remember what happened when numerous consumers began writing to the USDA (US Department of Agriculture) about organic standards), although this may take some time. Some large companies have already urged consumers to pay attention to their natural flavors and asked for advice on what information they should put on labels if they use only vegetarian or vegan flavors. This happened due to the fact that manufacturers realized that this issue is relevant for vegetarians and vegans.

Many phone numbers on product labels belong to customer service departments that employ people who can only read their company's official information. If you're tempted to let your anger out and yell at them, don't do it. It's like blaming the average salesperson because the store they work for has the wrong policy.

Irina Mastryukova, Head of Quality Department, Valio LLC:

Flavorings are substances that enhance flavor and aroma. They are added to food products to improve the organoleptic properties - taste and smell. With the help of flavorings of quite the same type of products, different, recognizable natural tastes and aromas of fruits, berries, vegetables, and so on are “assigned”.

All flavors can be conditionally divided into natural compounds (natural flavors) and substances that mimic natural ones. The first type of flavoring additives is isolated from berries, fruits, vegetables, plants in the form of juices, essences or concentrates. Flavors that mimic natural flavors can be identical to natural or artificial. They are obtained synthetically, and the methods for obtaining additives in this group can be very diverse.

The chemical nature of flavors that are identical to natural ones can also be very different. It includes various components, for example: essential oils, aldehydes, alcohols, esters and the like. In the production of such flavor additives, the most important thing is to reproduce compounds that are identical in their chemical composition to the substances that make up the flavor created by nature. Not all raw materials for them are grown in the garden, some can be obtained in laboratories. But in terms of its main organoleptic properties (taste and smell), a flavor that is identical to natural should not differ from natural in any way. Natural flavors are more expensive than their synthetic counterparts and do not have high heat, acid and temporal stability.

In the dairy industry, flavoring additives are used in the production of fruit and berry yoghurts, curds and various desserts, and the type of flavoring is indicated in the technical text on the label. In the last decade, consumers around the world have become very attentive to the composition of the products they buy. Ingredients with complex names, the origin of which is difficult for a non-specialist to determine, raise questions. That is why the concept of a "clean label", in English Clean Label, is becoming more and more popular: products that contain only simple and understandable components. Natural, as they say.

Yulia Khankhalaeva, brand manager of Ahmad Tea Ltd.:

“According to the European classification, a flavor that is identical to natural is compiled according to a chemical structure that coincides with the structure of natural substances. Such flavors are considered harmless and are approved for use in the food industry in all countries of the world.

Modern flavors used in the food industry are obtained from natural raw materials (vegetable or animal origin) through physical, enzymatic or microbiological processes. The quality and quantity of flavors in the Russian Federation are controlled by the technical regulation TR TS 029/2012 "Safety requirements for food additives, flavors and technological aids". The manufacturer must indicate the presence of these substances on the packaging.

Flavors are divided into five types.

FTNF Natural Flavor is composed of 95% of the fruit or natural substance directly named in the formulation, with 5% of other fruit or natural substance added.

WONF Natural Flavoring is biotechnologically produced from the fruit, berry or other natural substance that is specifically designated in the composition, with the addition of other fruits, berries, etc., in a larger proportion than in FTNF.

Natural flavoring FOS is biotechnologically made from other fruits or natural substances - that is, it does not contain the product directly indicated in the name.

Flavoring agent identical to natural is composed according to the chemical structure that coincides with the structure of natural substances, but not on the basis of natural substances.

Artificial flavoring is composed exclusively of artificial substances, and the structure of natural substances is also ignored.

Ahmad Tea Ltd. in its blends, it uses partly natural flavors and partly identical natural flavors, but never artificial flavors.”