You know when you walk into a grocery store and you smell the scent of some nice grilled chicken or when you smell the heart-warming scent of freshly baked bread calling you from the bakery section?
Now, wouldn't it be weird if you one day would find out that the smell you are sensing is not actually chicken or bread – it’s completely falsified and fabricated, constructed in a laboratory.
Well, that day is today people.
Did you know that there are over hundreds of companies and businesses in the world which solemnly focus on providing aromas for the food we eat? If you don't know what aromas are for I can tell you that the purpose of aromas is to enhance or to completely provide certain foods flavours. Basically, the aromas which are synthetically produced are here to give us the realistic sensation of something that is not real.
That juicy chicken you smell from the hot counter is not as juicy as it is pumped with salt and water (in order to make it look bigger so that it makes you feel that you get a lot for your money but we'll bring that up in a later post) as it is jammed with artificial aromas. Oh, and that mouth watering bread you’re smelling from the bakery section which makes you think of old nana and sweet childhood memories… well it is not as much sweet and mouth-watering as it is mass-produced with poor quality ingredients, and therefore obviously in desperate need for added aroma and taste.
I was recently surfing on one of these lovely company’s websites and I came across their “Savoury flavours” section. AND MY OH MY, did they have some good stuff or what!? They had all kinds of flavours and aromas! They had the fake chicken smell, the seafood one and even some simulated beef and sausage ones! But it doesn’t stop there folks! No, the best part of their “fake meat-smell section” was that within the categories of beef and chicken, you could choose from a multiple varieties of smells such as “freshly grilled”, “charcoal” and “Smokey taste”. Yaaay, I mean why eat and smell the real deal when we can eat and smell aromas instead? It’s like going to Paris without actually having to go to Paris! Life is getting easier people and I love it.
On another page I found this statement: “Our expert flavour chemists specialize in designing custom made flavours to meet the continuously changing demands of our customer's market.” Yeah, I mean instead of actually coming up with new recipes for bread and meat or instead of actually changing the natural seasonings, why not let the flavour chemists inject all kinds of synthetic and cute chemicals inside our bodies?
Well, if you excuse me now, I am going to go and have some:
Geranial
ethyl metholphenyl glycidate
vanillin
ethyl pelargonate
isoamyl acetate
ethyl butyrate
2-methyl-2-pentenoic acid
1-(prop-1-enyl)-3, 4,5-trimethoxybenzene.
Oh you didn’t get that? Well, that’s what the strawberry aroma is made of and yeah baby, it’s the exact same thing that’s in the strawberry flapjack you’re holding in your left hand. Run along now and play. Bye.
" I'm so fake I should be in Hollywood"