When you chug a sports drink or chew a stick of gum, you probably don't think of science. But there is a precise science - and a delicate art - behind what you're tasting. Morley Safer reports on the multibillion dollar flavor industry, whose scientists create natural and artificial flavorings that make your mouth water and keep you coming back for more.
The following is a script of "The Flavorists" which aired on Nov. 27, 2011. Morley Safer is correspondent, Ruth Streeter, producer.
As the Thanksgiving weekend comes to a close, you may feel as overstuffed as that turkey you ate. And if you're overweight - and the chances are, you are, it's probably because you eat too much, too much of the wrong stuff. Most of the wrong stuff we eat comes in a bottle, a can, or a box - food that's been processed - much of that food has been flavored.
The flavoring industry is the enabler of the food processing business - which depends on it to create a craving for everything from soda pop to chicken soup. It is Willy Wonka and his chocolate factory as a multibillion dollar industry; an industry cloaked in secrecy. But recently Givaudan, the largest flavoring company in the world, allowed us in to see them work their magic.
[Jim Hassel: So definitely an aroma, the mandarin, dancy tangerine. Real mild though. Not in your face.]
These are "super sniffers," "super tasters"...
[Andy Daniher: And more bitter.]
...on the prowl. The special forces - first responders to the call for the next best taste.
[Andy Daniher: The mandarin notes are fantastic.]
They are braving the wilds of a citrus grove in Riverside, California, where Jim Hassel - whose nose and palette are legendary - leads a Givaudan team on a taste safari. Big game hunters in search of the next great taste in soft drinks. Their inspiration? The greatest flavorist of them all: Mother Nature.
Jim Hassel: Seeing everything that's available really just drives the whole creative process.
Morley Safer: Like an artist going to Rome or something?
Hassel: Correct. Correct.
Safer: But the ultimate purpose is to sell more soft drinks or whatever?
Hassel: That's what we're in the business of, selling flavors.
Safer: Let's go sniffing.
Our perception of taste is largely located in the nose, but described in the language of music.
Dawn Streich: Do you get like a tropical note? A little bit of papaya? Potentially?
Andy Daniher: Cotton candy note?
Dawn Streich: Cotton candy a little bit.
They are plotting how to move the flavors they find in this grove to your supermarket shelf and then on to your stomach.
Hassel: I could see it in a sports drink, I could see it in a flavored water. And I also could see it in a twist on an orange carbonated beverage.
When they find something they like, they extract its flavor molecules from the fruit on the tree. Then back in the lab, they mimic Mother Nature's molecules with chemicals.
Safer: Essentially what you do is, you take whatever this smells like--
Ziaogen Yang: Right.
Safer: --and copy it?
Yang: Right. Exactly.
Safer: And then I suppose you could-- if you chose to, you could, quote unquote, "improve on it."
Yang: Yes.
Hassel: Exactly.
Yang: We-- all the time.
The Holy Grail - a flavor so good you can't resist it.
Dawn Streich: In our fruit flavors we're talking about, we want a burst in the beginning. And maybe a finish that doesn't linger too much so that you want more of it.
Hassel: And you don't want a long linger, because you're not going to eat more of it if it lingers.
Safer: Aha. So I see, it's going to be a quick fix. And then--
Hassel: Have more.
Safer: And then have more. But that suggests something else?
Hassel: Exactly.
Safer: Which is called addiction?
Hassel: Exactly.
Safer: You're tryin' to create an addictive taste?
Hassel: That's a good word.
Streich: Or something that they want to go back for again and again.
Food companies know that flavor is what makes repeat customers. So they commission Givaudan to create what they hope will be a mouthwatering taste.
Givaudan may be the biggest multinational you've never heard of. The Swiss company employs almost 9,000 people in 45 countries, providing tastiness to just about every cuisine imaginable.
Safer: There's a lot of secrecy involved in your profession, correct?
Hassel: Our intellectual properties are our formulas. So without that, we have nothing. So there's a lot of secrecy. You really don't want anyone to know.
Michelle Hagen: My world is making things taste good.
Soda pop and chewing gum flavorist Michelle Hagen has helped Givaudan and the food companies make billions with her secret formulas.
Hagen: I create thousands of flavors. So I need somewhere to put them. And I have a lot of flavors in here.
