Release time:

2024-05-24

Oranges, lemons, strawberries, cherries, grapes... Perhaps it's because seeing fruit-flavored drinks reminds us of the natural fruit aromas that bring back fond memories. When shopping, seeing a dazzling array of fruit-flavored drinks, it's always hard to resist trying them. After opening the bottle and taking a sip, however, I suddenly become sober and start to doubt. Although the taste is 90% similar, compared to real fruit, the drink tastes somewhat similar, but not exactly the same. What's going on? The History of the Development of Food Flavorings If you check the ingredient list of fruit-flavored drinks, you'll find that the vast majority do not contain the corresponding fruit juice or fruit pieces, but rather artificial food flavorings that mimic the taste of a certain fruit. People's use of natural fragrances can be traced back more than 5,000 years, but food flavorings made from natural or synthetic fragrances have only a history of about 150 years. Everyone loves natural scents, and natural scents are indeed abundant, but from a scientific and technological point of view, there are very few natural fragrances that can be directly extracted from plants and animals and widely used in food. With the improvement of living standards, people's requirements for food taste are also getting higher and higher. Only food with rich and varied flavors can attract consumers. Today, the varieties and quantities of food flavorings used for daily needs have far exceeded the types and output of natural fragrances. Moreover, in some cases, people's requirements for the taste and aroma of food have also exceeded the flavoring capabilities of natural fragrances themselves. For example, adding some lemon juice to beer or cola to give these drinks a lemon flavor is still within the scope of what natural fragrances can support, but if you want to taste "cherry blossom cola", "hot pot mutton-flavored potato chips", or "grapefruit chili chocolate", it is obviously not something that conventional natural fragrances can easily produce. Therefore, gradually, food flavorings, as a huge supplement to natural fragrances, with the advantages of acceptable cost, controllable concentration, and achievable technology, have become an indispensable important additive in the food industry. Although the dependence on food flavorings is not very acceptable to people, a closer look reveals that in modern society, except for fresh fruits, vegetables, meat, eggs, milk, almost all other foods have long been inseparable from various food flavorings. Why Doesn't It Taste Like Real Fruit? The orange, lemon, and strawberry-flavored drinks we often drink are not that different from the taste of real fruit, and the public acceptance is quite high. But some less common flavors, such as cherry-flavored drinks, can't even be said to be exactly the same as the taste of cherries; they are completely irrelevant. Some people think it has a smell of paint, while others think it's a bit like bitter almond, and although subjective feelings vary, none of them think it's the taste of the cherry fruit we remember. So some people complain, we have already accepted food flavorings in terms of food safety, but can't we make the food flavorings taste more similar? It's undeniably a bit difficult. Because the composition of natural fruit aromas is very complex, there are dozens of chemical components, and if all of them are artificially prepared according to the proportion of nature, the cost will be too high, so perfumers usually only focus on a few main components to prepare the flavoring, and it is not surprising that the flavor is not exactly the same as the natural fruit flavor. Can the Taste of Food Flavorings Be Improved? With the development of science and technology, the taste of food flavorings can certainly be improved to make it closer and closer to the imitated taste, but this may require long-term and continuous efforts. According to relevant experts, China's flavoring industry's technological level is about 20 years behind that of foreign counterparts. Many flavorings need to be purchased from abroad at high prices, so the cost of the prepared food flavorings goes up, and then the flavor has to be reduced. On the one hand, technological limitations prevent the confirmation of the structure of the main components of a certain flavor; on the other hand, even if it is confirmed, due to cost control, many kinds of flavorings will not be used for preparation. In addition, the scarcity of perfumers is also a problem. The research and development of new flavorings relies entirely on the preparation of perfumers, and the cultivation of perfumers requires not only investment of time and money, but also depends on the person's talent. According to an interview with Professor Sun Baoguo of the Fragrance and Flavoring Specialty at Beijing Technology and Business University, this specialty has been around for more than 40 years, and the school only has "two and a half" people who can be called perfumers (title), who are students trained by professors, and the professor jokingly said that he is not a perfumer and is far worse than a perfumer. The process of developing a new flavoring and finally applying it to a product is also time-consuming, generally taking about two years. First, food safety must be ensured to prove that the new flavoring is harmless to the human body; then, perfumers develop new flavored products according to market demand; then, food processing plants produce samples; samples need to be trial-marketed, and consumers need to try and give feedback. If consumers think the product tastes good and have a desire to buy it, then the food factory will order flavorings from the flavoring factory, and the flavoring factory will order flavorings from the flavoring factory. In short, the development and improvement of food flavorings not only require technological progress and talent cultivation within the industry, but also depend on the development of the entire industrial chain. In the past, people only had a single, monotonous choice of beverage flavors, but now there is a dazzling array of different fruit-flavored beverage choices, which is inseparable from the development of food flavorings in beverages; it continuously enriches the taste of food, satisfies everyone's better life, and sometimes the taste experience may be unsatisfactory, but let's give its development and progress more time and patience.