
Scents in brands of body wash, chicken stock and canned drink come from Givaudan - pmcpinto
http://mashable.com/2017/03/21/flavour-company-givaudan
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praptak
There is a rational component in the fear of artificial flavours. They serve
to further dissociate what's tasty from what is good for you to eat.

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cgs
If you're curious about artificial and natural flavors, "The Dorito Effect" is
a great read on the topic. What blew me away: "Naturally flavored" is marketed
as "healthy" when it is anything but. Natural flavors are just as bad as
artificial flavors. You are adding chemicals to food to make them more
palatable, but not enhancing nutrition. Those chemical compounds happen to
occur in nature, but the process of isolating and extracting them then adding
them back to food is just as bad as adding synthesized compounds (artificial
flavors). We're so concerned with calories, but this is the real root cause of
the obesity epidemic: calories without nutrition.

~~~
Latty
The word "Natural" is a huge red flag for me. It's consistently only used by
marketers to try and imply that there is something good about a product,
without actually having anything good to say.

If your product is healthy, you call it healthy. If your product is
nutritious, you call it nutritious. "Natural" is just an excuse - we found
this thing in something natural, so now we can use it. It tells you nothing of
value about the product, but for some reason people have associations between
"Natural" and "Good".

In fact, artificial is often much better for you - artificial items are
generally more strictly regulated and therefore tested, much more accurately
measured and often much more sustainable and efficient to produce.

As is commonly pointed out, I can provide you with some very natural poisons.

~~~
manyxcxi
I've begun mentally treating "Natural" as the equivalent of someone saying
"trust me". Well, I did... until you seemed to preemptively think I had a
reason not to.

Ignore the words on the front, flip the package over and read the little ones
on the back. The higher up the ingredients list a word is, the more prominent
it is in the product. Some big scary words are no big deal, others are just
another word for sugar. So many ways to say sugar, it's incredible. And then
there's sugar alcohols, which are a whole other pain in the ass to decode.

Then there's the loop holes, if a particular ingredient isn't above a certain
concentration it doesn't have to be listed- well that's freaking helpful!

I'm probably not saying anything new, but you're a lot better off if you can
just assemble the raw ingredients yourself.

~~~
Latty
> I've begun mentally treating "Natural" as the equivalent of someone saying
> "trust me". Well, I did... until you seemed to preemptively think I had a
> reason not to.

I'm not sure what your point was there - but my post wasn't meant to be a
"everyone thinks natural means good" \- just that it gets used so much by
marketers I assume people must. I definitely subscribe to your approach.

I'm in the UK, and from what I gather our labelling requirements are stricter
than the US's (at least in most states) - for example "trace" ingredients
still need to be listed. Unfortunately, it is clear that most take the
marketing over the reality, and I accept that it does take time to go over
ingredients on everything you use (especially when batches change the
ingredient list, which is pretty common). I've had to shop for diabetics
before, and it's a nightmare, because two of the same product on a shelf can
have 10% more or less sugar.

Here in the UK, there is a lot of law around requiring advertising to be
faithful to reality - e.g: recently they made a requirement that fruit juices
have to list the fruits in order of quantity in the name of the juice, so you
can't sell "grape and elderflower" juice that has a first ingredient of apple
juice. I think these regulations, where possible, help consumers a lot, and
"natural" is one of those misleading terms.

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pdpi
That's a name I hadn't heard in a long while.

Almost a decade ago, I worked on a project with them, where we added tracking
for Halal/Kosher status of their additives — As many of their products end up
in food, ingredients coming into the factories were marked as Halal and/or
Kosher, and those properties had to be correctly bubbled up the intermediates
all the way to final products.

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HarryHirsch
There's also Symrise, Firmenich, IFF and Takasago. No need to boost Givaudan
over its competitors.

Fun fact: Symrise used to be two companies, Dragoco and Haarmann & Reimer,
both based in Holzminden, Germany, and separated by a two-lane road.

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vanattab
Does anyone know a good website were you can buy small amounts of different
"engineered food flavorings? I would like to experiment with them in my
cooking.

~~~
HarryHirsch
One could try any of the chemical supply houses: Aldrich, Alfa, TCI, those are
the biggest. Maybe they'll even let private parties order non-hazardous
materials. (What was it again about censorship: political censorship is only
skin-deep but censorship of the market goes to the bone?)

~~~
mattkrause
If you knew exactly what you wanted, I suppose you could probably get it from
Sigma Aldrich.

However, it will be listed as something like "isoamyl acetate" and not "banana
flavor", so you would need to know exactly what you want. Also, make sure you
get an edible/food grade version!

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growlix
There's an interesting New Yorker article from a few years ago that profiles
some the firms and individuals involved in taste/scent making:
[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/11/23/the-taste-
maker...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/11/23/the-taste-makers)

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DrScump
That mostly-unrelated video of the Ember mug below the article text oddly
parallels the current thread in _Dilbert_ about Wally's new coffee-warmer-
using-waste-phone-heat invention.

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beezle
Can somebody tell me why it is nearly impossible to find unscented body
(shower) wash? Even Ivory only seems to make scented versions.

~~~
Nadya
If you shop in a generic store instead of online or at a specialized shop - it
is because it is unpopular. If you buy off Amazon, just as an example, you
have a few dozen options if you search "unscented body wash" .

People like to "smell clean" \- not necessarily "be clean". So scented things
are a big part of that.

