The most popular food flavorings can be made at home. These flavors include vanilla, lemon and orange. Unlike most similar industrially produced products, homemade food flavorings will be completely natural and safe. With their help, you can always shade, improve or enhance the taste and aroma of your dishes.
Where are food flavorings used?
The scope of application of food flavorings is wide: muffins, buns, cakes, homemade chocolate and candies, ice cream, liqueurs, tinctures, liqueurs, cocktails, cold and hot drinks...
It would be more correct to call such flavorings extracts obtained by static extraction. You immerse the aromatic raw material in regular vodka and leave it to infuse for a while. During the infusion process, extraction occurs: the process of extracting flavoring substances from the raw material into an alcohol-containing base.
You can infuse various aromatic products with vodka (rum, diluted alcohol). Both plants (mint, lavender, rose, lemon balm), and various spices, fruits and berries.
Let's take a closer look at the infusion process using the three most popular extracts as an example.
How to make vanilla extract
To prepare vanilla extract you will need one vanilla pod and 30 - 40 ml of vodka. You can use rum instead of vodka. In this case, the vanilla essence will acquire additional aromatic shades.
- Slice the vanilla pod lengthwise to expose the seeds. Place the pod in a glass container with a tight lid and fill with vodka.
- Leave to infuse in a cool, dark place for three to six weeks. Shake the container periodically. The longer the extract is infused, the brighter and richer its taste and aroma will be.
- To obtain vanilla flavoring, you can also use a pod from which the seeds have already been removed. But in this case, the extract will be less saturated.
Store the finished vanilla extract in a cool place, protected from direct sunlight. Shelf life: several years.
You might be interested in Technology for preparing tinctures, liqueurs and liqueurs
How to make lemon extract
To prepare lemon flavor you will need 1 lemon and 50 ml of vodka.
- Lemon should be washed thoroughly hot water using a brush and soap solution.
- Then, using a grater, carefully remove the zest, trying not to touch the white layer.
- Place the zest in a glass container with a tight lid, fill with vodka.
- Leave in a cool, dark place for 1 week. Then strain through cheesecloth.
Store prepared lemon essence in a cool, dark place. Shelf life: 1 year.
How to make orange extract
Orange extract is made in a similar way to lemon extract.
Citrus extracts are prone to rapid oxidation when exposed to light and oxygen. Therefore, be sure to tightly close the storage container and keep it strictly cold.
Add natural flavors to your baked goods and drinks according to the dosages specified in the recipes. But no one forbids experimenting: try mixing several natural flavors in one recipe to get new flavor combinations.
Have you ever read the ingredient list on a box or dish and wondered what “natural flavors” are and what they are for? Shouldn't food be good if you don't add anything? Maybe, but first it's important to understand what makes up flavor and why taste is needed to begin with.
What makes food delicious?
Taste is an important characteristic of the foods we eat every day—it's hard to imagine eating a diet of flavorless foods!
Essentially, it is a combination of taste, aroma and sensation of food.
While some foods, such as fresh fruits and berries, are delicious on their own, most of the dishes we eat are more complex and almost always contain some added ingredient to enhance the flavor. In fact, every recipe includes some additional ingredients to enhance the flavor, such as salt, pepper, herbs and spices.
Enhancing the flavors of foods can make eating a joyful experience. But adding flavoring to food also helps stimulate appetite, which is essential for people who need to gain weight, such as older adults who may have lost some of their sense of smell.
Flavorings as food additives
Do you know how fresh food tastes when you make it at home? Think fresh bread straight from the oven or a delicious stew. But, it's also quite time-consuming, which is why many consumers prefer to have processed foods on hand that taste almost as good as their homemade counterpart.
The fact is that processed foods need to be stored for a long time, and the preservation methods used to achieve this tend to reduce flavor. Thus, food manufacturers may turn to adding natural flavors to improve or maintain the taste of food after it has been processed. So what are natural scents?
The term natural flavor means an essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extraction, protein hydrolysate, distillate or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis that contains flavoring components derived from spices, fruit juices, vegetables or plant juices, edible yeast, grass, bark, buds, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products or fermentation products, the significant function of which in food is flavoring rather than nutritional.
The words "natural flavor" on the ingredient list don't really tell you about the taste. While it's fairly easy to identify flavors in an actual recipe, it can be more difficult to know what flavors are added to processed foods in general.
4 questions about natural flavors
- Are natural flavors safer than artificial flavors? Probably no. Artificial flavors are made from non-food sources, while natural flavors are made from produce or other edible products. However, they all appear to be about the same and are safe for consumption.
- Are natural flavors suitable for vegetarian products? Natural flavors can be made from animal products. Thus, unless the manufacturer explicitly states that the natural flavors are plant-based or the food product is vegetarian, there is no way to know whether they come from animals or plants.
- Are natural flavors organic? It is impossible to know for sure unless the food manufacturer states that it is from organic sources.
- Is monosodium glutamate a natural flavoring? Monosodium glutamate, or MSG, is a flavor enhancer. But, if it is used as an ingredient in food, it must be listed as such.
Word from Medictionary
Natural flavors are used in a wide variety of products and are derived from edible elements found in nature. While they are certainly safe to consume, simply listing "natural flavors" on the ingredient list does not mean that a food product is healthier than foods made with artificial flavors or no additives at all.
You still need to look at the label to know whether the food is actually good for you or not.
Flavorings are widely present in food products nowadays. They are added everywhere, as 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.
If you receive a product with dubious external characteristics, you should be wary. Everyone is used to the fact that rotten fish, meat and other products have characteristic smell, but sometimes manufacturers resort to deception for the sake of material gain. Naturally identical flavors are those obtained chemically. Thanks to them, it became possible to produce an analogue of red caviar, which is several times cheaper than the real thing. It smells exactly the same as the original and tastes the same. Only such a product is zero. It does not contain vitamins and microelements. Everything would be fine, but there are side effects that are caused by identical natural flavors.
Harm to health
Most of all, flavors identical to natural ones are dangerous for children. If they enter a child’s body, they cause malfunctions. nervous system, which sometimes become irreversible. An adult suffers no less from their use. People pay for the taste and smell of the product with increased heart rate and weakening of the entire body. When a person abuses modified food, he or she does not immediately see the negative effect. Only gradually do the affected people begin to make themselves felt
Identical to natural flavors. Why are people afraid of them?
When going to the store, few people 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 public surveys on the harm caused to health by identical natural flavors vary. 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 has not yet been refuted by anyone.
There is an easy way to avoid using harmful products. Look for the label “natural flavors” on the packaging. This will guarantee that the product is of the highest quality and safest. In addition, it is better to eat home-cooked food rather than going to fast food restaurants. You'll have to remember all your grandmother's recipes and learn how to cook deliciously. Seasonings should be purchased only of plant origin in crushed form. If you see the inscription “monosodium glutamate” on the packaging, then you should refuse to purchase such a product. These rules are extremely simple. Remember: a couple of minutes spent studying the ingredients of a product can keep you healthy for many years.
Most of us believe that natural flavors are better than artificial ones, as the latter contain many chemicals.
Is it really?
In fact, everything we eat, everything we smell, everything that surrounds us is made up of chemicals. Whether they are natural or created in a laboratory does not matter.
For example, we smell cloves thanks to a chemical called eugenol. And cinnamon, which is simply the dried bark of cinnamon trees, gets its flavor from cinnamon compounds.
All flavors contain chemicals - both artificial and natural. The only difference between them is the source of these chemicals. Natural flavors are created from animal or plant products. Even laboratory processing does not detract from the fact that they are natural. Artificial flavors are created from something inedible, not living. For example, from oil, which is converted into chemicals through processing.
Here's how the Food and Drug Administration describes natural flavoring:
“A natural flavor is: an essential oil, essence, extract, or product obtained by distillation, roasting, heating, or enzymatic decomposition. Flavoring has flavoring qualities derived from spices, fruits, vegetables or their juice, herbs, roots or leaves and other plant products. The flavoring qualities can also be obtained from meat, seafood, eggs, dairy products, as well as from their enzymes.”
The definition of artificial flavor in short is that an artificial flavor is any substance that does not meet the description of a natural flavor.
Sometimes the same flavor can be obtained using either natural or artificial ingredients. The result will be the same, only the creation process is different.
So why use artificial flavors at all? The fact is that it is much cheaper to use synthetic chemicals than to obtain the same natural ones. The artificial ingredients used are also safer than natural ones - they are tested and proven. In addition, their production is more environmentally friendly than, for example, growing a lot of violets to obtain a natural flavor.
For example, vanillin extract is responsible for the taste and smell of vanilla. In nature, vanillin is obtained from orchids. This process is very long and expensive. Therefore, scientists created artificial vanillin in the laboratory.
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.
Many people don't realize that natural flavors can contain just as many chemicals as artificial ones. For example, the amount of chemicals used to create artificial strawberry flavoring is equal to the amount of chemicals in fresh strawberries.
Artificial grape flavor is made from the chemical components of purple grapes - not the red or green ones we buy in stores. That is why products containing this flavor have a rich purple color (for example, candy or carbonated drinks). For the same reason, store-bought grapes do not have the same characteristic taste.
Some natural flavors are much more dangerous than their artificial counterparts. For example, traces of cyanide can be found in naturally occurring almond flavoring. And unprocessed soybeans, which are used to make soy sauce, can also be toxic.
Many people are concerned about “chemicals” like MSG added to food. Some people attribute headaches to excessive consumption of foods containing monosodium glutamate (Chinese restaurant syndrome). But, in reality, such a connection is nothing more than a myth. Researchers believe that such symptoms may be more likely caused by excess salt in Chinese food.
Artificially created flavors undergo much more rigorous testing than natural ones. But this fact can only be considered an argument in their favor. After all, creating a flavor from scratch ensures that each component has passed a safety test and has been approved for use.
Why do we need flavors?
Flavorings are designed to impart taste and aroma to food products and to enhance existing taste and aroma.
The use of flavors allows you to:
Create a wide range of food products that differ in taste and aroma based on similar products
restore taste and aroma, partially lost during storage or processing - freezing, pasteurization, canning, concentration
standardize the taste and aroma characteristics of food products, regardless of annual fluctuations in the quality of initial agricultural raw materials
enhance the natural taste and aroma of products
add flavor to products based on some nutritionally valuable, but flavorless, types of raw materials (for example, soy products)
rid food products of unpleasant tastes
add flavor to products obtained using technological processes in which natural flavor formation does not occur (for example, cooking in microwave ovens).
What flavors are there?
Flavorings are usually divided into natural, identical to natural and artificial.
Natural flavors
The US Code of Federal Regulations defines natural flavor or natural flavor as "an essential oil, resin, essence, extract, protein hydrolysate or any product of roasting, heating or fermentation that contains flavoring components derived from spices, fruits or fruit juices, vegetables or vegetable juices, nutritional yeast, herbs, bark, buds , roots, leaves or similar plant materials, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products or products obtained from them by fermentation, the essential function of which in the composition of a food product is more flavoring than nutritional."
Natural flavors are extremely expensive and are used only in cases where it is not possible to produce flavors identical to natural ones or artificial ones.
Natural identical flavors
In Russia in accordance with GOST R 52464-2005 Natural identical flavoring- this is a food flavoring, the flavoring part of which contains one or more flavoring substances identical to natural ones; it may contain flavoring preparations and natural flavoring substances.
In the USA, and now in the European Union, the term “natural identical flavoring” is not used.
As an example, we can cite fruit and berry flavorings intended for the production of caramel - citrus fruits Orange, Lemon and Grapefruit, as well as Mint, consisting of more than 50% natural essential oils; Strawberry, Blackcurrant, Peach, Apricot.
Artificial Flavors
GOST R 52464-2005 gives the following definition of artificial flavoring:
Artificial flavor- food flavoring, the flavoring part of which contains one or more artificial flavoring substances, may contain flavoring preparations, natural and natural-identical flavoring substances.
American food legislation classifies all flavors that do not fall under the definition of “natural” as artificial. Artificial food flavors contain at least one artificial substance that does not exist in nature. It is obtained by chemical synthesis. Artificial flavors are highly stable, intense and inexpensive. For example, arovanilon (ethylvanillin) is an artificial flavor used by the food industry around the world.
What are flavorings made from and how are they obtained?
Natural food flavors are extracted by physical means(pressing, extraction, distillation) from source materials of plant or animal origin. Dry plant powders (for example, garlic) are obtained by removing water from the original crushed plant or squeezed juice by spraying or sublimation.
In terms of the composition of the main aromatic components and their chemical structure, flavors identical to natural ones fully correspond to natural ones. In this case, part of the components or even the entire flavor is obtained artificially. Chemical synthesis produces, for example, vanillin, para-hydroxyphenyl-3-butanone (the main flavor-forming component for raspberry flavor). By optimization and targeted influence on enzymatic processes and the development of certain microorganisms, for example, cheese flavors are obtained, butter, mustard, horseradish.
Smoke flavors are most often the result of extracting purified smoke smoke with water and then concentrating the extracts. They are obtained in several stages. First, by optimizing the enzymatic processes of meat maturation, a significant amount of meat flavor precursors is obtained. The precursors are then converted into meaty flavors by heating (similar to boiling and frying). The intensity of such products is 20-50 times higher than that of traditionally produced meat products.
A single artificial flavor can be synthesized from hundreds of chemical compounds that mimic natural flavors. Some artificial vanilla flavors are made from paper industry waste or petroleum.
Flavors identical to natural ones are 100% chemical. Like any chemical product, such flavorings often contain toxic impurities that impair liver and kidney function, inhibit cardiac and respiratory activity, and negatively affect metabolic processes. Modern research has shown the ability of artificial flavors to influence human behavior.
InfoGlaz.rf Link to the article from which this copy was made -Today the women's website “Beautiful and Successful” will talk about benefits and harms of flavorings. So as not to mislead you from the first lines, we will say right away that the benefits of food additives that give the product a particular aroma are negligible(but this is only provided that the flavoring is natural). But you can suffer from flavorings, but this, again, is subject to constant consumption of products that contain artificial flavoring additives. However, first things first, so first a little theory.
What are flavorings?
Food additives, the addition of which improves the aroma and taste of a product, are called flavoring agents. Their use very beneficial to manufacturers, since it allows them to create based on products of the same type the widest range food products with different aroma and taste, for example, ice cream, jelly, marmalade, caramel, soft drinks, etc.
Adding flavors to products is very beneficial for manufacturers, which cannot be said about consumers of these very products. After all, the result of consuming products loaded with flavorings and other additives is health problems.
Food flavorings: classification
Natural flavors
This group of flavorings includes substances obtained during physical impact on natural raw materials.
Physical influence means methods such as pressing, distillation, extraction. The raw material can be any natural product of plant or animal origin.
Thus, natural strawberry flavoring is obtained by pressing strawberries. Natural orange flavor is obtained by extracting orange peels essential oil(extraction). But the aroma of onion or garlic can be obtained after all the water has been removed from the squeezed juice (distillation).
However, in Russia the interpretation of the term “natural flavor” is somewhat different from that accepted in Europe.
According to it, a natural flavoring can be called a substance that, in addition to natural flavoring, contains It also includes a flavoring preparation. This means that natural food flavors are not as harmless as the word “natural” might seem when you first read them.
Flavors identical to natural
Flavors “pear”, “raspberry”, “grape”, etc. have the same composition as their natural counterparts, berries and fruits. Only they are obtained not physically, but chemically (synthesized in the laboratory), but the formula is the same as natural flavors, That is why they are called identical to them. Fragrances identical to natural ones can only cause harm to your health if you consume products containing these substances every day.
Artificial Flavors
These are completely chemical flavoring and aromatic compounds that have no natural analogues.
Food flavorings: harm
Compared to other food additives, flavorings are not that dangerous, but they still cause some harm to health.
Let's begin with preference should always be given to products with natural flavors, since neither an identical, nor even a synthetic flavoring can fully convey the true aroma and taste of a particular product.
However, not everything is so simple here either.
- First, taste and aroma natural products under influence high temperatures unstable.
- Secondly, natural flavors are expensive.
- Thirdly, identical natural or synthetic flavors, in contrast to natural food flavors, are much more convenient to use due to their “unpretentiousness” and lower cost.
To make the conversation about the dangers of flavorings more substantive, the site offers an example - Vanillin flavoring.
Vanillin is the main aromatic substance of vanilla. The use of this spice in pure form- expensive pleasure Therefore, they began to extract white powder from vanilla pods, which has a strong odor characteristic of this spice. The natural flavor vanillin does not cause harm (with the exception of individual intolerance). On the contrary, due to the content of polyphenols in it, it fights malignant neoplasms. It can be used in the prevention of vascular and heart diseases, it relieves inflammatory processes, has an antimicrobial effect and antiallergic properties.
However Natural vanillin in stores and in finished products is even more rare, because its price, although different from the price of vanilla, remains quite high. Therefore, vanillin flavoring, identical to natural, or its synthetic “brother” is widely used.
The harm of the flavoring, identical to natural vanillin, is caused by the presence of chemical compounds in it that are not beneficial to health. The most dangerous additive is coumarin, the toxic effect of which destroys the liver. It is clear that beneficial properties natural vanillin it does not have an identical flavoring.
The harm of artificial flavors
Flavors, for the most part artificial, although they are harmful to health, are not as significant as other food additives. Significant harm to health, especially children's health, can only be caused by intensive consumption of products with synthetic flavors.
Long-term consumption of foods containing high concentrations of artificial flavors can negatively affect the liver.
If we talk about safe food flavors, then it should be said that most food flavors are safe, if consumed in reasonable quantities, that is, little by little and not every day. Preference, of course, should be given to natural or identical flavors, and the site still recommends limiting the use of products with artificial flavors.
Copying this article is prohibited!
