Fragrances and Flavors Industry

About 90 percent of the money that Americans spend on food is used to buy processed food. But the canning, freezing, and dehydrating techniques used to process food destroy most of its flavor. Since the end of World War II, a vast industry has arisen in the United States to make processed food palatable. Without this flavoring industry, today’s fast food industry could not exist.

The aroma of a food can be responsible for as much as 90 percent of its flavor. Indeed “flavor” is primarily the smell of gases being released by the chemicals you’ve just put in your mouth. The act of drinking, sucking, or chewing a substance releases its volatile gases. They flow out of the mouth and up the nostrils, or up the passageway in the back of the mouth, to a thin layer of nerve cells called the olfactory epithelium, located at the base of the nose, right between the eyes.

Aroma and memory are somehow inextricably linked. A smell can suddenly evoke a long-for-forgotten moment. The flavors of childhood foods seem to leave an indelible mark, and adults often return to them, without always knowing why. These “comfort foods” become a source of pleasure and reassurance, a fact that fast food chains work hard to promote. Childhood memories of Happy Meals can translate into frequent adult visits to McDonald’s, like those of the chain’s “heavy users,” the customers who eat thee four or five times a week.

The flavor industry is highly secretive. Its leading companies will not divulge the precise formulas of flavor compounds or the identities of clients. The secrecy is deemed essential for protecting the reputation of beloved brands. The fast food chains, understandably, would like the public to believe that the flavors of their food somehow originate in their restaurant kitchens, not in distant factories run by other firms.

The American flavor industry now has annual revenues of about $1.4 billion. Approximately ten thousand new processed food products are introduced every year in the United States. Almost all of them require flavor additives. And about nine out of every ten of these new food products fail. The latest flavor innovations and corporate realignments are heralded in publications such as Food Chemical News, Food Engineering, Chemical Market Reporter, and Food Product Design.

Much of the taste and aroma of American fast food is now manufactured at a series of large chemical plants off the New Jersey Turnpike. Dozens of companies manufacture flavors in the New Jersey corridor between Teaneck and South Brunswick. Indeed, the area produces about two-thirds of the flavor additives sold in the United States. Many of New Jersey’s flavor companies also manufacture color additives, which are used to make processed foods look appealing. Food coloring serves many of the same purposes as lipstick, eye shadow, mascara – and is often made from the same pigments.