Techno Taste Artificial Flavors May Be Taking Away Our Ability To Discern What’s Real And What’s Fake

What do cheese-coated corn curls, grape soda, Jell-O, Weight Watchers Chocolate Raspberry Royale and the sweet-cream buttermilk version of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter have in common?

In addition to sharing prime positions on supermarket display shelves, they all contain artificial flavorings.

With the dramatic proliferation of these artificial flavors (and their odors) in the American food supply, some fear that the artificial may someday be accepted as the real.

Might we lose our appreciation of natural smells and flavors of foods such as honey, corn, grapes and cranberries?

Might the children of the 21st century not recognize them at all?

“Real” foods, especially fresh fruits and vegetables, are widely available, of course. But children are not eager consumers of them. And even fresh foods, ranging from strawberries and tomatoes to pork and beef, have undergone genetic changes that affect their flavor.

“Industry pushes a perception that its creations are identical to nature’s,” said Harry Lawless, an associate professor of food science at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. “But nature’s food is highly complex. You can’t duplicate the biotechnology of a grape in a test tube.”

Probably the food technologists’ most embarrassing failure has been their inability to create a flavorful yet long-lasting tomato through genetic engineering. (MacGregor tomatoes, which made an appearance in the Spokane area two years ago, were pulled off the market for further fine-tuning.)

“Technology is a bad word to many people,” said Robin Kline, a spokeswoman for the National Pork Council. Her product also has undergone considerable genetic change to produce a leaner hog, although consumers differ on whether the new pork is as flavorful as the old.

But the issue goes beyond the flavor of the “other white meat,” or another rotten tomato, to a larger question of taste.

Artificial flavors might be “overwhelming our palates, diluting our ability to taste real food,” says Audrey Cross, associate professor of nutrition at the Columbia University School of Public Health in New York City.

“When we taste the real thing,” she says, “it doesn’t taste right.”

Her fear is fueled by the increasing sophistication of artificial flavorings.

The “artificial flavoring” listed on packaged foods seems to be “closer to the real thing,” says Alan Hirsch, director of the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago.

“The aim - and it’s both a science and an art - is to reproduce the natural ingredient’s ability to stimulate receptors (in the nose and mouth),” adds Mark Friedman, assistant director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. “And we know a lot more about how these receptors work than we did a few years ago.”

Columbia’s Cross says artificial flavorings may be a factor in the increase in obesity among Americans.

“When the intensity of an artificially flavored food increases, so does the sweetness,” Cross said. “It’s possible when the taste buds are overstimulated, they demand more food.

“Furthermore, artificially flavored foods all taste the same, but uniform taste is unnatural. One strawberry doesn’t taste exactly like the next strawberry. We already have lost so much variety and diversity in our fresh food supply.”

Dosing foods with more and stronger artificial flavorings and odors carries implications for all of us, but particularly for the old and the young.

Scientists say that our rapidly aging population needs all the help it can get to respond to the smell and taste of foods.

“As we grow older our sense of smell drops down,” Hirsch says. “Half of Americans over 65 and three-quarters over 80 find food tastes too bland. They need artificial odors to provide a sense of taste.

“A study we did showed the flavor level that pleased the elderly was so powerful younger people couldn’t stand it. I can envision a time when frozen foods will be packaged for specific age groups.”

John Draz, a Bensenville, Ill., chef and former culinary school instructor, is equally concerned about younger Americans’ sense of taste.

“With so many meals prepared or purchased outside the home, there often is no benchmark, no frame of reference except the food at a chain restaurant, where market research and production costs determine the recipes,” he says.

“When I was teaching, I was struck by how few students were motivated by taste memories. They may not have been sensorially deprived, but they certainly lacked any romantic attachment to food.”

Once, as Mom or Grandma cooked from scratch, a child could watch ingredients being combined and ask what herb or spice was causing a specific smell. Often there are no smells in today’s home kitchens and the ingredients have been combined in advance, in a factory or carryout kitchen.

“Americans have worried about less food being made from scratch for at least 50 years,” says American studies professor Warren Belasco of the University of Maryland. “Biochemists have been saying a chemical is just a chemical since the 19th century. In terms of food quality, is the glass half empty or half full?”

The Pork Council’s Kline is optimistic. “I can’t join the alarmists who are worried the new generation will grow up with flawed palates,” she says.

“Maybe their palates awaken at a later age because home-cooked food no longer is the only checkpoint. But I see so much positive happening on the restaurant scene: the demand for real mashed potatoes and roast vegetables, taste comparisons of microbrewed beers and wines, even those long menu descriptions of dishes. In the markets, I see better and more highly nutritious foods available year-round.”

“That a person’s capacity to taste will somehow be degraded by exposure to additives is not true,” adds Linda Bartoshuk, a sensory science specialist at the Yale University School of Medicine. “This is an aesthetic argument more than a medical or scientific one.”

Even though eating a diet rich in flavor- and odor-enhanced foods may not affect how tastes are physically perceived, some scientists say, it may affect preference. A person will still be able to distinguish fresh from fabricated, but they may actually prefer the artificial.

As Monell’s Friedman says: “It’s what you’re used to that tastes best.”