Saturday, November 17, 2007

Flavor Discovery

TWe just discovered Buffalo Wings & Blue Cheese potato chips from Superstore. Truly Amazing! The taste is very real. Very spicy. Very blue cheesy.

It amazes me the flavors “they” can get on chips. It also makes me wonder how they do it. Do they just blend chemicals together till they get a great flavor, discern what it may be, and market it as such?

I vaguely remember my high school science teacher Mr. Reed mixing a bunch of chemicals he happened to have “in the back” with crackers and making us try what was supposed to be an apple turnover - the kind you’d buy at A&W or McDonalds. I think they were good. He told us this is how the fast food restaurants actually make apple turnovers. It’s soo much cheaper if you don’t have to use apples. Apparently.

I’ll still eat the occasional turnover and I think of Mr. Reed every time but I have to convince myself that what I am eating contains real apples. But I digress.

I’d love to see a Discovery Channel series on the process of imparting flavors on foods that are supposed to something other than what they are - like the Buffalo Wings Blue Cheese potato chips. I wonder if they don’t want us to know. That’s probably why I have never seen a show on it.

And now that I think about it once “they” come up with a healthy, nutritious potato chip, one that makes us loose weight, we will never have to eat original food ever again! It seems to me that they are figuring out ways to get any flavor you want on a chip. That could be cool. But that could be gross too. I don’t know if I could eat turkey & stuffing flavored chips, nor tapioca pudding flavored chips. Imagine milk chocolate flavored chips.

Now let’s talk about ice-cream flavors. No lets not. I don’t want to get started on that. But they should include ice-cream in the Discovery Channel series on food invention.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Fast Food Nation was an interesting book. I highly recommend it (the movie version wasn't all that good). I mention it because there's one chapter in which they talk about flavouring. The ingredients for a Burger King milkshake take up half a page.

If you've ever read the ingredient label on food containers, you'll know they refer to "artificial flavour" and "natural flavour". They're essentially the same thing, the difference being how they are produced. "Natural flavours" are flavour chemicals taken directly from, say, a strawberry. "Artificial flavours" are the same flavour chemical, but they've been "created".

Interesting stuff.

Glad you're enjoying the R&R