Is named flavoring to those special preparations of substances that have aromatic sapid principles, that are recruited from nature or come from artificial substances and are for authorized use in legal matters.
Compounds of substances that have aromatic principles that act on taste and that result from nature or from legally authorized artificial sources
The main characteristic of these preparations is that They act directly on the senses of taste and smell with the mission of reinforcing the taste or smell that the food in question already has, or failing that, they transmit a given flavor and aroma to thereby make it much more attractive and palatable..
While, flavor refers to the sensation that a certain food awakens in our taste buds once inside our mouth.
The sensation that we feel will be closely related to the chemical sensations that our sense of taste discovers in that food.
Types of flavors and emotional associations
Human beings give a huge value to the taste and aroma that food has and many times that determines its predilection and acceptance, or on the contrary, its rejection.
For example, when some foods do not naturally have this assessment, it will be provided through flavorings.
We can basically find the following flavors: salty, acid, sweet and bitter, which are closely linked to the sense of taste, which is the one that allows us to determine and distinguish them from each other.
When we taste a food and it is bitter, we will know that it is neither sweet, nor acid, nor salty, and then, if we dislike it, we can add sugar or some flavoring to remove that bitterness.
It is our tongue, through the taste buds and smell, that are in charge of making us feel the type of substance that enters our mouth; the flavor that it has may be to the taste of the person, since this is a strictly subjective matter, and may be pleasant for someone, and unpleasant for another.
Now, there are some conventions that most of us share, although of course, there may be exceptions to the rule, but we will refer to the most common ...
People prefer foods that stand out for their sweetness for breakfast and desserts, while for lunch or dinner bitter, salty and acidic are preferred, while it is common that people do not like to mix certain flavors with an hour a day, for example, have a cappuccino accompanied by a slice of pizza.
And we cannot ignore that there are social conventions deeply rooted in the culture regarding the considerations of some flavors and the associations that are made with them, so the bitter is especially related to the unpleasant, while the sweet taste is mainly associated with pleasure and satisfaction, but of course, as we said, this does not imply that this can be the case for all people, since there are people who love bitterness and do not like sweet at all ...
Presentation and classes of flavorings
It should be noted that these substances usually present in various states: liquid, powder, or paste , and not necessarily all flavorings are exclusively intended for food, but also many flavorings are attributed to some products that pass through people's mouths but are not swallowed, among the most common are: toothpaste, gum , pens and toys.
There are several types of flavorings that we will list below: natural (As their name anticipates, they come from nature itself, d animals and vgtals, and it has an exclusively food use, being achieved from physical methods such as: concentration, extraction and distillation), synthetics (These flavorings are the result of a chemical manufacturing process and have the mission of representing the characteristics of some natural products), artificial (They are achieved through chemical processes that do not have similes or equivalents in nature yet).
It is worth mentioning that they are harmless to health so there is no fear of ingesting them), and colors, sugars and flavorings (These are chemical additives with the mission that the colors, smells and flavors of food are much stronger and tastier than what they would be in the natural state, that is, without the inclusion of these; they do not have a nutritional mission in almost all cases).
There are many doubts about whether natural flavorings are healthier than artificial ones, while experts consider that they are not since there are practically no differences in terms of chemical composition.
There are even many artificial flavors that have fewer chemicals than natural ones and it is even claimed that artificial ones can have greater safety in their composition because they are created under strict control standards in laboratories, something that clearly does not happen with natural ones. .
