Why Don’t Artificial Flavors Taste Accurate?

Video written by Ben Doyle

[indoor_vaping]

I had actually always wondered how "vanilla" had come to be associated with being bland and uninteresting given its origin as an exotic bean that only grows on one island.

[officially]

Here are all the irrelevant fun facts from 1:29:

A drink that's 10% less sweet but colored red will be perceived as sweeter than one that's not.

Potato chip bags are crinkly on purpose, because the sound tricks our brain into thinking the chips taste fresher.

Low-pitched sounds can make food taste more bitter, and high-pitched sounds can make food taste sweeter.

If you dye a steak bright blue it really freaks people out.

We can tell whether a liquid is hot or cold by the sound it makes when it's being poured.

Froot Loops are all the same flavor. If you close your eyes, you won't be able to tell the difference between any of them.

The background noise on airplanes enhances the taste of umami.

Sour candies are often coated in sugar because rough textures make foods taste more sour.

Looking at pictures of high-calorie foods before eating something will make it taste better.

[Chubby_Bub]

When I was young my parents took me to a vanilla plantation in Hawaii. The owner was actually obsessed with vanilla, the way people are connoisseurs about wine. I think he was kind of nuts. He also looked like Al from Toy Story 2.

[ShortHax]

I admire the bravery of the men and women that discovered the vanilla taste of beaver butt

[hidaven]

I personally love “banana” flavored things, not because it tastes like banana, but because I just like the taste

[Kee]

Another factor with artificial flavors is that not all chemical compounds last as long as each other. There might be 10 or 20 or even a hundred different compounds that go into a flavor from a fruit, but how many of those flavors will keep for a week? A month? Possibly years sitting on a store shelf? Make something with fresh fruit and you'll find that the flavor gradually fades away over time and only certain parts of that flavor remain - like compare peach jelly made with fresh peaches that's weeks or months old with currently fresh peaches and you'll find that a lot of the flavor complexity has faded. That's a big part of why watermelon flavor tastes so unlike watermelon; the chemical that is watermelon flavor is actually found in watermelon in a large amount but most of the other chemical compounds found in a watermelon will barely keep a few days, so only that one chemical is suitable for use in a candy or a soda or anything that's going to be sitting on shelves for a long time.

[moabt.frican]

Wonder if Guy Fieri realizes how wealthy he could actually be if the candy and soda manufacturers consulted with him on the artificial flavors they use. I mean, with him being the mayor of Flavortown and all, you'd think it'd be a no-brainer.

[wooperismyfavorite]

Finally, an answer to why I like grapes but grape flavored things are absolutely disgusting.

[Darxide]

"Artificial strawberry is just strawberry with bad graphics."

The best line I've heard in a long time. That wins.

Also, the source of one of the more common artificial vanillin is just... wood. Yup. It's made from plain old wood. From trees.

[matthewmccoy]

my sisters husband makes artificial flavors for a living. he literally tests shit like citrus and watermelon for everything like drink companies and food chains. you’d be surprised how widely spread these things are. i was drinking a beer once and he went “you know my company made the blueberry flavor in that right?”

[TheElectroclassic]

Low Resolution Flavors has to be the best analogy ever to describe this.

[plz]

The reality is, most of us have NEVER had the chance to taste real vanilla, so we would never know if 'fake' vanilla actually tastes fake

[octaviews]

A lesson on how to make a bunch of stock footage half as interesting.

[chemistweeb]

throwback to when I synthesized fake banana flavoring in a lab and then spilled it everywhere so my bench smelled like bananas for weeks

[brendo]

Funnily enough there was a banana split flavoured milk in Australia that tasted scarily real.

You could taste the caramel, you could taste the ice cream, you could taste the banana and you could taste the wafer, which was the weirdest bit.

It tasted horrible but it was scary accurate

[wraithgames]

There's this Japanese bubblegum I've been chewing since I was a kid that tastes almost exactly like black grapes. It's some good stuff!

[randalalansmith]

Around age 30, I tasted a concord grape for the first time and realized that's what fake-grape was mimicking. Wine grapes don't taste anything like that.

[Heptad]

Putting aside the fact that, as a kid, vile faux cherry flavor cough medicine ruined cherries forever for me, the joke I like to tell is that, for example, Fanta "grape" soda doesn't taste so much like grapes, as it represents the closest approximation to what "purple" would taste like if colors had a taste.

[TheRealGuywithoutaMustache]

"Artificial strawberry is just strawberry with bad graphics"

Weird because I actually prefer the taste of artificial strawberries over the real ones.

[Crowbars]

3:14 - "We have penicillin"
**Shows a picture of a bunch of mints**