Understanding Natural Flavors

This volume reviews the origins and perception of natural food flavours and the effects of processing. Advertising claims that food is natural (without additives, artificial ingredients or flavourings) have become important in marketing, but there is little published on the basis of natural food flavours. This work assumes that an understanding of natural flavours will assist product development and safeguard food quality. The first section addresses the importance of flavour and its influence on food acceptability, how to measure flavour and how to ensure that the flavour presented in a food is the optimum for the consumer. Such factors are important to the producer since they relate to success in the marketplace. Later chapters describe the sources of the important components of flavour, explaining how and why there is variation in a particular food. It also examines complex flavours and the application of biotechnology to development of novel natural flavours.