How "natural" and artificial flavour additives damage your palate and your health

Image by @foodfaithfit

One reason people who are new to fine chocolate do not appreciate the flavour of the chocolate is not because they are “bad at tasting” or just don’t care, but one main reason is due to the foods they consume on a regular basis. Many foods today in our grocery stores more often than not contain artificial and “natural” flavourings. For the purpose of this article, I will simply refer to both as “flavour enhancers”. Although they may not have a direct and immediate impact on your health (physical and mental), they do alter your reality of food quality, nutrition, and flavour, and overtime lead you towards a less satisfying and less healthy way of eating.

Many people may have an idea of what an “artificial flavour” may be, and may avoid foods with this as an ingredient when shopping. Who wants artificial when you can have something which contains real and more natural ingredients? Keep in mind though, that when you eat out, you are almost always ingesting flavour enhancers in your foods. This is even true at higher end expensive restaurants, pastry shops, and cafes where everything is made on-site from scratch. I have seen this myself over many years of working in the food industry. You would be surprised how often flavour enhancers find their way into ingredients used even in “made-from-scratch” kitchens. Cooking from scratch using only real ingredients and making it taste incredible is, sadly, a rare occurrence and a rare skill in much of the world today. Also, this idea of flavour enhanced food is something we automatically associate with that “North American” style diet. The truth is, a huge amount of food coming from Asia and even Europe contain flavour enhancers as well these days. This is a world-wide problem most people are not quite aware.

The US Food & Drug Administration defines artificial and natural flavours as the following:

(a)(1) The term artificial flavor or artificial flavoring means any substance, the function of which is to impart flavor, which is not derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, fish, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof. Artificial flavor includes the substances listed in §§ 172.515(b) and 582.60 of this chapter except where these are derived from natural sources.

(3) The term natural flavor or natural flavoring means the essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis, which contains the flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof, whose significant function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional. Natural flavors, include the natural essence or extractives obtained from plants listed in subpart A of part 582 of this chapter, and the substances listed in § 172.510 of this chapter.

These definitions may be slightly different from country to country. The only true difference between natural and artificial flavour enhancers, is that “natural” flavours are derived from constituents that were at one point alive or came from a living organic (carbon-based) organism. That’s essentially it. As well, people assume that the "natural” flavour comes from the ingredient itself, but this is not always the case. For instance, your organic cherry yogurt with “natural flavour” and the end of the ingredient list is assumed to come from actual cherries, but this is usually not the case. When you read an ingredient list (and you should always read your ingredient lists) and you see towards the end of the list the term “natural flavour”, know that it is a synthesized flavour enhancer likely not derived from any ingredient close to what you are eating in that product. The reason why we have “natural flavour” ingredients is because consumers do not like the term “artificial”, and so the term got re-branded. Laws state that as long as the flavouring is made from ingredients which at one point were natural (from nature), regardless of how removed from nature it becomes, it can be called natural. The consumer is happy, food manufactures are happy, investors are happy, and this is we mostly see “natural flavour” on many of our foods today instead of “artificial flavour”. When it comes down to the compounds in “natural” vs artificial flavour, they are not different from each other. And neither compare the the full flavour experience of the real ingredient.

This may seem trivial to most, but flavour and food quality go hand in hand. Flavour and our satisfaction in life go hand in hand. Anyone who has suffered from long term or permanent flavour loss can attest to the increase in feeling underwhelmed and numb, bouts of depression, or worse. Food and flavour are crucial to our existence. However, there is an acceleration of this creation of a parallel universe of flavour illusion. Below I will discuss how flavour enhancers impacts both our health and our palate, and how it ties into the fine chocolate industry.

Flavour enhancers encourage low-quality food production

Why do we even have flavour enhancers in the first place? Not a difficult question to answer as most of you can already guess. Two reasons: it’s a more cost-effective and consistent way to have consumers coming back for more of a particular food product. In most of the world, produce, meats, and other naturally occurring foods are becoming less flavourful. As food growing becomes more and more centralized (think enormous national and multinational companies with strong influence on movers and shakers locally or abroad), we are seeing an increase in cost-effective production and a decrease in flavour. Authentic flavour (and nutrition) is, sadly, not what sells food today. Many people of my generation who have only grown up on grocery store produce and meats often assume this is the natural flavour of these foods. How can a fresh raw tomato or carrot taste any different? How can pure real beef or chicken taste any different? The truth is, the flavour of food is diminishing over time since the natural inherent flavour of the produce or meats is not important to the manufacturers of these foods, those selling them, or their investors. Food is like any commodity today, and profit always trumps true quality. Food is not produced for flavour and nutrition, is produced to look lovely and appealing and be as cost effective as can be.

This salad may look lovely, and may taste lovely as well. However, most produce grown and available to us is quite bland in regards to flavour. This can be due to the varieties grown (for appearance over flavour), as well as when and how they are harvested and stored. Image by @nadineprimeau

You may think that flavour is surely important to anyone producing food since people want their food to be delicious. First of all, you have generations of people growing up with subpar bland produce and meats, and so they really do not know what they are missing for the most part. Second, you have the flavour enhancer industry which allows consumers to enjoy these bland foods in a way which is more cost effective than growing these foods properly for their natural inherent flavour. You can have pasteurized juices or jarred salsa that has been kept for months or years that has a flavour that pops regardless of when you open it. You have a plethora of sauces or sauce ingredients with flavour enhancers you can pour and marinate your meats and vegetables in. You can purchase buckets of “real” ready to use apples, cherries, expensive fruit puree, or expensive praline from belgium used in artisan bakeries that taste great because of the flavour enhancers added to them. These foods taste lovely to most not because they were made from the most flavourful ingredients, but because of the flavour enhancers added to them.

You may say, well I love the vegetables I buy, I just bake them with some oil and season with spices and salt and it’s wonderful. And I don’t doubt you there. However, the truth is, many foods you eat may taste even better if you had access to them. Not all, but most of the produce we purchase has a flavour which is more muted due to cost (of growing and such), or is produced to be muted in flavour in order to appeal to a wider audience. For instance, real Italian food is very difficult to make, because there isn’t a lot of seasoning or sauces added to it. Much of it comes down to the ingredient itself and the flavours they naturally possess. You can make a batch of tomato sauce with the same ingredients (tomato, onion, oil, salt, basil), but the flavour of the ingredients themselves matter so much since there is little room for error. Your healthy lightly seasoned grilled vegetables, dry rub steak with a rub you made yourself with real spics, would have tasted even much better had the actual produce or meat been grown for flavour. You may have experience this if you ever purchased a high quality grass-fed beef that were allowed to graze vs “sweatshop” beef from a grocery store chain. In fact, you may not have even needed to season the meat at all if that was the case! Think of that for a moment.

No longer do food manufactures need to produce food which is highly flavourful on its own in order keep the consumer “happy”. I put “happy” in quotations because as I’ll explain below, most consumers are not satisfied with most of their food, but truly do not realize this. They live in an illusion of flavour. Think of it like getting thousands of likes or followers on social media. Does this truly represent a reality of friends and relationships? We live in a world which is quickly removing itself from reality, and food is are the forefront of this. Flavour enhancers allow us to seemingly enjoy subpar food.

Flavour enhancers pull you into unhealthy foods

Chips have a bad reputation, but honestly, if you were to remove all the artificial and “natural” flavours added, most people wouldn’t enjoy them or would not feel the need to overeat them either. Image by @theorganiccrave

Simply put, if you were to remove all the flavour enhancers (artificial and “natural”) of all the foods in the grocery store, your local restaurants or cafe, or even your pantry, the first thing you would notice is how unsatisfying most of this food is. Since they are not made with the best ingredients, or in methods of cooking which bring out the best flavour, they would be very bland. Think for a moment the grocery store isles of juices and soda, chips and crackers, cookies and cereals. If you were to remove all those flavour enhancers, you would have isles of colourful boxes of cereals that all taste the same. Isles of drinks that all taste the same but have different colours. Even if you yourself are not an avid consumer of junk or processed foods, the odd time you delve into a bag of chips or soda you are experiencing food purely based on an artificial reality of flavour. Most people would have absolutely not desire to consume these foods I listed above had the flavour enhancers not been included. The reason you or many people consume tons of these low-nutrient and often harmful food products all around the world is because of they way they taste, the tricks they play on the mind (since flavour is a perception built in the mind), and the seduction they have to pull you into eating more and more.

And as I mentioned earlier, this does not only apply to what many term “junk foods” but even products as simple as pickled vegetables, a block of cheese, a natural organic tub of vanilla yogurt, organic almond milk, pure raspberry jam, or gluten-free crackers will more often than not contain flavour enhancers. Read your ingredients list and you will be amazed how often you see this even in foods which were marketed as healthier. They offer the illusion that the foods you are eating are naturally delicious, when in fact, your senses and your brain are being taken for a ride in virtual flavour reality. This idea may even sound exciting to some: a virtual flavour reality. Some of you may question whether the natural inherent flavour of food is even necessary anymore. This concept of artificial realities, especially in regards to foods, is an idea you will see growing and becoming more mainstream in the next while. However, it opens the door to a world of food removed from what our bodies were designed to ingest. It removes us from the reality of true flavour which still cannot be replaced by synthesized flavour enhancers. It also allows highly profitable companies with their own self-interest as a motivating factor to continue to limit and replace quality natural foods with sub-quality foods with the perception of being better than they truly are.

Keep in mind that although some ideas or technology can be used for good, more often than not it can also be used for more sinister reasons as well. There is a reason why many people view large companies are “heartless”, and why a huge component of their marketing budget today is to represent them as community-oriented and compassionate. It’s essentially damage control from decades or centuries of ruthless business. There is no passion for quality, there’s not passion for the craft of food manufacturing, and there certainly is no desire to offer you what is best for you. In order to grow and succeed and swallow up the competition, decisions need to be made. And although the consumer is a huge part of that decision, don’t assume your true happiness and satisfaction in life is a part of their decision. Therefore, it is important to understand why food manufactures make the choices they make in regards to ingredients. Is it really to please you, or is it to grow their company at the cost of directing you towards less nourishing and satisfying foods. The decisions of many food manufacturers today, to produce lower quality food laced with flavour enhancers to keep you coming back for more, is made not for your health, your nutrition, or your ultimate satisfaction, but simply to keep you happy enough to keep you coming back for more.

Flavour enhancers cause you to overeat

This brings me to another important point I discuss often in my tastings: food satisfaction. Flavour enhancers cannot replicate the true multi-dimensional flavour profile of quality foods. Take chocolate bars for example. A commercial chocolate bar may have the following ingredients: cocoa bean, sugar, cocoa butter, vanilla. Not a bad list of ingredients. However, the cocoa bean used is produced not for flavour but for profit. The result is a flavour that is a very basic simple “cocoa” flavour. Most of the world thinks this is the signature flavour of chocolate, but many fine chocolate makers or cacao researchers would disagree. This is the “signature” flavour because this is the only flavour from cocoa beans most of the world is used to. Keep in mind this resulting chocolate bar is tasty to most, but still very basic even with the addition of vanilla.

Flavour enhancers encourage us to overeat, often foods that we should limit. Image by @emilembunzama

All the fine chocolate bars sold on this website, in particular the plain dark single-origin bars, contain only cocoa beans, sugar, and sometimes cocoa butter. That’s it. No flavour enhancers, not even vanilla. And the flavour of this chocolate? Multilayered with a range of flavour notes that go beyond cocoa or do not resemble the flavour of chocolate at all. Why is that? These chocolate bars were made with only 2 or 3 ingredients, and no flavours added, but they were made with a genetically superior cacao bean that has inherent qualities which result in spectacular flavour. And if this superior cacao bean falls into the hands of a skilled chocolate maker who knows how to roast and refine it properly, you will have a multilayered intensely flavoured chocolate - all of which came from the bean itself with no other flavours added.

I can’t even count how many people in my tastings say to me that they cannot eat an entire fine chocolate bar because the flavour is just too overwhelming and satisfying. They quickly understand the concept of how a few bites of fine chocolate (which is really all you need - not an entire bar) has enough flavour, enough satisfaction (and even enough nutrients) that you don’t desire to eat the whole bar. Think about this for a moment. A large reason of why we overeat is because we are not satisfied with what we are eating. We think we are satisfied, but your brain knows better. Our bodies are smarter than that. Our very basic taste receptors (sweet, sour, salty) may be tingling and satisfied, and there is some level of aromas from our commercial sub quality foods, but the intensity of the flavour or the range of flavour is lacking. If we eat this food long enough, we forget or never really know what food can be like. Whether we know it or not, our bodies were designed to seek and enjoy full naturally inherent flavourful foods, and when our bodies do not find it, we keep eating. We keep eating because we are trying to reach a level of satisfaction which the sub quality foods we eat are not delivering. They don’t quite quench that flavour satisfaction that our bodies naturally crave. The high levels of salt, sugar, and sourness in processed foods (junk or not) do satisfy us to a degree, and cue your bodies to keep eating this food, but we’re never truly satisfied mentally.

Remember, flavour is a perception built in the brain which requires more stimulation than we receive in our sub quality foods in order to fully be satisfied. Therefore, we eat until we feel full or too full - another cue that implies we are “satisfied” in a way, but not truly in the way food was intended to satisfy us. It is true we overeat for many different reasons. However, a big reason many of us overeat is the food culture we continue to live in which never delivers the satisfaction our brain and body requires. On one hand we have the food growing industry pumping out mediocre flavoured ingredients. And they only do so because they join forces (directly or indirectly) with the flavour enhancer industry to create food which is “good enough”. But this food is never quite satisfying, so we overeat it. In many cases we eat food which is either nutritionally lacking or even harmful simply due to the flavour enhancers and nothing else (even good texture can’t replace poor or lacking flavour).

They distort your palate

Image by @louishansel

Flavour enhancers both artificial and “natural” are manufactured compounds similar but not exactly like the real aroma compounds naturally found in high quality foods. Think of it like a knock-off version of a brand of shoes or bag where they appear similar at first, but the quality is not quite the same and they are certainly not authentic. Flavour enhancers are there to improve the flavour of the foods because the flavour of the food itself is subpar. Again, take a look at ingredient lists of all your prepared foods, condiments, sauces, soups, juices, snacks, cookies, cereals, infused oils, spreads, and you will be surprised how often you see the term “natural” flavour (which as discussed above, is essentially synonymous with artificial flavours but rebranded to appeal to consumers). When you eat out at restaurants and cafes, many of the ingredients and seasonings often also have flavour enhancers, as well as higher levels of fat, salty, sweet, and sour ingredients which is why they often taste better than when many people cook from scratch at home. Again, this is not only fast food, but even higher end restaurants and cafes where everything is made from scratch. Working in kitchens for years allowed me to read the labels of everything we used, and I was always astonished how difficult it is to find ingredients without flavour enhancers.

So how does this distort your palate? Your “palate” is really just another word for how you receive flavour. Many associated with your tongue or mouth, but that is only part of the bigger picture of flavour. Flavour is not actually received in the mouth, but in the brain. As you eat these foods on a regular basis, your brain is conditioned to expect these unnatural flavours from foods. As well, in some cases, your brain gets used to the unnatural flavours of foods where some people begin to enjoy the artificial flavours more than the real flavours due to built in memories and emotions associated with these unnatural flavours. If we are not actively aware of the ingredients in our foods and whether they have flavour enhancers, our brains become accustomed to unnatural flavour profiles as well as enhanced flavour levels that go beyond what we find in our foods. This perception can be “unlearned” or altered if you begin to be more mindful of your foods and seek out higher quality foods. Not everyone, but many will begin to “taste” the difference if they give themselves the opportunity to.

Flavour is a perception built in the brain connected with memory and emotions, and after years of eating foods with flavour enhancers, we shift the thresholds of what we can or cannot taste. For instance, take listening to music through your headphones as an example. When one first begins using headphones, the volume level is usually at an appropriate level. However, sometimes when one gets emotionally into a song the volume tends to go up. If you do this for long enough, eventually the threshold for volume that you enjoy increases higher and higher. When you go back to listening to music at the a more moderate level as you did years ago, the music sounds far lower than it used to. In this case, hair cells in the ear may die which leads to permanent decrease in hearing. The good news about flavour is for the most part it is more plastic (it can change) and you can change your thresholds if you wish. Another example would be your threshold for sweetness. The more sugar you add to your foods over time, the higher your body’s threshold becomes for sweetness. If you were to cut out sugar, at first your foods will taste bland. However, if you keep at it for a few weeks, your threshold for sweetness lowers, and you can enjoy the same foods with much less or no sugar. The great thing about flavour (which combines taste, aroma, and other senses as well was memory and emotion) is that we can train our “palates” to like and dislike certain flavours or tastes and shift the thresholds as well so that we don’t need to consume overly salty, sweet, or sour foods to be satisfied.

Therefore, if you avoid foods with flavour enhancers and go truly natural, you will find the foods may taste a bit more bland at first. However, if you give it some time, you will find that the natural inherent flavour of the foods appear to be heightened. They were always there, but you couldn’t taste them due to the “loud volume” of the flavour enhancers that distorted your palate. After this, go back to the food you used to enjoy and you may find that you cannot enjoy them anymore, and not to the same degree. This is why many chocolate tasters (the general public who also aware or unaware consume foods with lots of flavour enhancers) are sometimes unable to articulate anything beyond cocoa, or why the chocolates do not seem to interesting. Their thresholds for flavours are out of whack, their brain is expecting foods with high sugar, salt, or sour tastes to make the food appear more flavourful than it is. Keep in mind that flavour is a combination of aromas (what we pick up in the nasopharynx or nose area), and taste (what we pick up in the mouth which is the basic sweet, sour bitter, etc.), along with all other senses, background memories of flavours and other associations. The perception of flavour is a complex creature. Understand it, and you will experience flavour like you never knew possible.

flavour enhancers in chocolate

With all this said, you can understand why I do not favour chocolate with flavour enhancers listed in the ingredient list. Most people today are used to chocolate being a carrier for other flavours. When people talk about their favourite chocolate, sometimes they mention dark or milk. However, usually it is the flavours/ingredients added to it such as chocolate with nuts, chocolate caramels, chocolate with fruits, chocolate and peppermint, and so on. When you’re dealing with fine chocolate, it really is about the flavour of the bean first. Many people assume dark chocolate has a signature or specific flavour, and this really is far from the case. Plain dark chocolate has a much wider variance in flavour than fine coffee or wine as well. The problem is that most people in the world have never experienced fine chocolate made from fine cocoa beans and produced by skilled chocolate makers. They are used to commercial chocolate only, which for many is nice, but for some of us was never quite thrilling. Perhaps in this case its not that the latter don’t enjoy chocolate, they just don’t enjoy commercial chocolate.

Unflavoured dark chocolate by Luisa Abram and unflavoured Oolong tea. The term “unflavoured” sounds boring to most, but in this case it can’t be farther from the case. Quality dark chocolate (and tea and other foods) can have incredible and profound flavour. You just need to know where to find it, and retrain your palate to appreciate it. Image by Bean To Bar World.

In your plain and single-origin dark chocolate bars there should never be any other flavour ingredients (be it flavour enhancers or true whole flavourful ingredients - unless it’s specifically a flavoured bar). Think of it like an espresso or fine wine. The flavour should come from the coffee bean or grape and how it was processed. That’s what you’re appreciating, and that’s what you’re paying for. There should be no flavours added. You wouldn’t consider your espresso fine if the barista added a shot of vanilla to it. Or imagine a wine maker adding fruit juice to a wine to make it taste better. They can, but that wouldn’t be considered a fine wine. In the same way, plain dark fine chocolate should have no other flavours added because you want to appreciate all the flavour the cocoa bean has to offer. This may sound boring to someone who has not had real fine chocolate, but to those who have, you know that a plain dark chocolate can have many pronounced flavour notes of nuts, fruits, caramel, cracker, honey, and so on which all come from the cocoa bean itself. No flavourings necessary. This is also key to determining the skill level of a chocolate maker. Like fine Italian food where ingredients are key and there is little room for error (since we don’t add too many flavours to mask the ingredients), there is little room for error in fine dark chocolate. Therefore, if made well, it really showcases the skill and talent of a chocolate maker. If they can make a superb dark single-origin chocolate with only cocoa bean and sugar, then they have a skill many do not and it should be respected and admired.

Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with adding real ingredients to chocolate to create other flavours or types of chocolate. This can including adding milk to make milk chocolate, adding nuts to make a gianduja, adding earl grey tea leaves or spices to make other flavoured bars (or a combination of all of these). The point is, real ingredients are perfectly fine to add to chocolate (be it an inclusion which is added after the chocolate is made, or an ingredient added into the refiner when the chocolate is being made). However, these manufactured “natural” and artificial flavour enhancers should never find their way into a high quality chocolate bar.

The flavour enhancer industry as a whole has ruined quality food in general, but also also distorted our perception of chocolate specifically as well. This is a large part of why it’s so challenging to educate people on fine chocolate and help them appreciate it, because many are coming to it with a distorted palate due to the artificial flavour enhancers they grew up with and enjoy to this day. However, for those who are willing to learn, the reward is great both for them and for myself. It’s very rewarding for me to hear at a tasting that I have shifted someone’s view of what chocolate can taste like and the level of satisfaction they can have from it. Take time to read the ingredients of your chocolate and other foods, and you will be surprised how often you run into flavour enhancers. Unfortunately, if you saw the ingredient list of foods you consumed at restaurants and cafes, you’d be even more surprised. Since we live in a world surrounded by artificial flavour, the more you educate yourself and be mindful when purchasing and consuming, the more satisfied you can become. A wonderful book you can read is Neurogastronomy listed in my library here. If the topics here raised questions and a thirst to learn more, I would definitely check out this book. I am in not way affiliated to the book or author, or receive any money from it. It is just an underutilized book that I know most of you would find helpful and beneficial to your journey with fine chocolate and food in general.