Raffi Khatchadourian, “The Taste Makers,” The New Yorker, November 23, 2009

“Flavor chemicals often make up less than one percent of the ingredients in processed foods, and many flavorists regard the terms ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ as largely meaningless—an indulgence for consumers who happen to believe that one is more likely to be toxic than another, even if the perception is not necessarily true,” writes The New Yorker’s Raffi Khatchadourian in this article examining the history of the food flavoring industry. Shadowing a flavorist who works for the Swiss company Givaudan, Khatchadourian reports that this $20 billion per year sector has evolved from “simple and direct” applications of natural additives or essential oils to a precise molecular science. “Once you begin to consider the natural world at a molecular level, the boundaries that separate one fruit from another begin to seem like artifice,” he notes, adding that both the technology and the secretive business culture present unique regulatory challenges.

“The flavor industry has long resisted the public disclosure of its formulas, and so monitoring the safety of the chemicals in them is complex,” according to Khatchadourian, who explains that the Food and Drug Administration first created its generally recognized as safe (GRAS) list so that flavoring houses were not obligated to reveal specific compounds. Khatchadourian claims that because “flavor additives are generally safe, and make up a tiny percentage of any given product’s ingredients, companies like Givaudan are in an unusual position when one considers how their work affects our health.” While some flavorings are reportedly used to “mask an absence, making cheap, nutritionally negligible ingredients seem delicious,” these same additives can likewise “mask a reduction in sugar or salt or trans fats—things that, in excess, are harmful.” As the Givaudan flavorist told Khatchadourian, “Think about unflavored rice cakes. They would sit on the shelves, because they taste like ceiling tiles. Now, add a maple-syrup flavor or a cheddar-cheese flavor to those rice cakes. People would choose them as a snack. It’s not practical or economical to use ‘real’ food to add flavor. There are lots of problems with this: the availability, the stability, the over-all intensity of such things.”