Tastes Like Chicken. Must Be Chicken?

Below is a list of the ingredients and the reason why your typical strawberry milkshake, the kind served up at your local Burger King and McDonalds, is no more derived from strawberries than the chicken…

Amyl acetate, amyl butyrate, amyl valerate, anethol, anisyl formate, benzyl acetate, benzyl isobutyrate, butyric acid, cinnamyl isobutyrate, cinnamyl valerate, cognac essential oil, diacetly, dipropyl ketone, ethyl acetate, ethyl amyl ketone, ethyl butyrate, ethyl cinnamate, ethyl heptanoate, ethyl heptylate, ethyl lactate, ethyl methylphenyl-glycidate, ethyl nitrate, ethyl propionate, ethyl valerate, heliotropin, hydroxyphrenyl-2-butanone (10% solution in alcohol), a-ionone, isobutyl anthranilate, isobutyl butyrate, lemon essential oil, maltol, 4-methylacetophenone, methyl anthranilate, methyl benzoate, methyl cinnamate, methyl heptine carbonate, methyl naphthyl ketone, methyl salicylate, mint essential oil, nerolin essential oil, nerolin, neryl isobutyrate, orris butter, phenethyl alcohol, rose, rum, ether, ?-undecalactone, vanillin, and solvent.*

The above chemical compounds are the kind of thing you can expect to make up the flavouring in many of the processed food products on our shop shelves. And as for the products that boast “natural flavouring”, the same rules apply. “Natural”, for those not clued in to mass produced food market speak, means derived from but not extracted from. In other words, artificially produced naturally occurring chemical compounds are what make up the “natural flavouring” in your organic yoghurt or orange squash. Laboratory nature. It is not really that hard to accept if you think about it. How can you expect a product that has been processed umpteen times over, stabilized, homogenized, preserved and textured to retain anything remotely near original with regard to the primary product; especially taste? So of course you need a chemical compound to give the product back what the industrial processes have taken away. This also allows the largest brands to achieve a uniform taste of their product, even when produced in numerous factories across the world. What it also means is that the best quality ingredients are no longer necessary, as what is not originally present in the primary product can be added at the end of the re-assembly line in chemical form.

Food flavouring is now a $billion industry. Your favourite aftershave, perfume, deodorant or cosmetic scent is probably made by the same people that put the fish taste in your fish fingers. In the processed food industry, scent is no different from taste. While your taste buds and mouth detect sweet, sour, hot or cold, and texture, your nose tells your brain as much if not more about the flavour of what you are chewing. Therefore, by attacking your nasal sensors as much as those in your mouth, we can be fooled into thinking the barbecue chicken wings in front of us may have actually been barbecued. Whether there is anything wrong with this is down to the individuals’ perception and valuation of the concept of choice; as a concept is what choice, when considering the supermarket shelves and a lot of restaurant menus, becomes.

The clean, imaginative and wholesome images many supermarket processed products promote are essentially there to sway the conscience of the consumer away from questioning what lies behind or what constitutes “natural”, “flavour” or “quality”. We get adverts featuring celebrity chefs giving hands on analysis on the “quality” ingredients of the latest “own range” product. As if they had an input into the production of the product. I think not. For starters, most celebrity chefs don’t have PhD’s in chemistry. These are an essential pre-requisite in modern food design. Do not feel bad if this does not re-assure you.

The flavour industry is not to blame. The same companies that produce some of the most recognisable flavours also produce the most recognisable scents and aromas. Truly they are very talented at their job. The quest for cheaper, standardised and omni-seasonal foods by the mass producers and retailers has meant certain corners have been cut in order to maximise profits. If the industrialised processes that most shelf, frozen and boxed foodstuffs go through means flavour and texture has to be replaced by chemical additives; this is of little concern to the mass producers and retailers. In fact, increased control over the taste and texture of the product is a welcome by-product of industrialised processing. How long will it be before these manufacturers and retailers completely skip the primary inputs and what will they replace them with?

The word imaginative was mentioned earlier in the text with regard to supermarket-processed products. Allow me to retract this. How can they be imaginative when so many of their processed products taste like chicken? Or maybe some corners are being cut in the flavouring process as well…

Malbouffe…
AC

*Eric Schlosser. “Fast Food Nation” 2001