Why McDonald's Fries Taste So Good

[Guest guest]

I just bought that book last week. Glad to be a vegan, as a big mac was the

last piece of meat I ever had. It was disgusting. N

 

-

" Robert Sterling " <robalini

<konformist >

Monday, August 27, 2007 10:32 AM

Konformist: Why McDonald's Fries Taste So Good

 

 

Please send as far and wide as possible.

 

Thanks,

Robert Sterling

Editor, The Konformist

http://www.konformist.com

 

http://www.rense.com/general77/whymac.htm

 

Why McDonald's Fries Taste So Good

By Eric Schlosser

Excerpt From Eric Schlosser's book 'Fast Food Nation' (Houghton-

Mifflin, 2001)

From The Atlantic Monthly

8-23-7

 

The french fry was " almost sacrosanct for me, " Ray Kroc, one of the

founders of McDonald's, wrote in his autobiography, " its preparation

a ritual to be followed religiously. " During the chain's early years

french fries were made from scratch every day. Russet Burbank

potatoes were peeled, cut into shoestrings, and fried in McDonald's

kitchens. As the chain expanded nationwide, in the mid-1960s, it

sought to cut labor costs, reduce the number of suppliers, and

ensure that its fries tasted the same at every restaurant.

McDonald's began switching to frozen french fries in 1966 -- and few

customers noticed the difference. Nevertheless, the change had a

profound effect on the nation's agriculture and diet. A familiar

food had been transformed into a highly processed industrial

commodity. McDonald's fries now come from huge manufacturing plants

that can peel, slice, cook, and freeze two million pounds of

potatoes a day. The rapid expansion of McDonald's and the popularity

of its low-cost, mass-produced fries changed the way Americans eat.

In 1960 Americans consumed an average of about eighty-one pounds of

fresh potatoes and four pounds of frozen french fries. In 2000 they

consumed an average of about fifty pounds of fresh potatoes and

thirty pounds of frozen fries. Today McDonald's is the largest buyer

of potatoes in the United States.

 

The taste of McDonald's french fries played a crucial role in the

chain's success -- fries are much more profitable than hamburgers --

and was long praised by customers, competitors, and even food

critics. James Beard loved McDonald's fries. Their distinctive taste

does not stem from the kind of potatoes that McDonald's buys, the

technology that processes them, or the restaurant equipment that

fries them: other chains use Russet Burbanks, buy their french fries

from the same large processing companies, and have similar fryers in

their restaurant kitchens. The taste of a french fry is largely

determined by the cooking oil. For decades McDonald's cooked its

french fries in a mixture of about seven percent cottonseed oil and

93 percent beef tallow. The mixture gave the fries their unique

flavor -- and more saturated beef fat per ounce than a McDonald's

hamburger.

 

In 1990, amid a barrage of criticism over the amount of cholesterol

in its fries, McDonald's switched to pure vegetable oil. This

presented the company with a challenge: how to make fries that

subtly taste like beef without cooking them in beef tallow. A look

at the ingredients in McDonald's french fries suggests how the

problem was solved. Toward the end of the list is a seemingly

innocuous yet oddly mysterious phrase: " natural flavor. " That

ingredient helps to explain not only why the fries taste so good but

also why most fast food -- indeed, most of the food Americans eat

today -- tastes the way it does.

 

Open your refrigerator, your freezer, your kitchen cupboards, and

look at the labels on your food. You'll find " natural flavor "

or " artificial flavor " in just about every list of ingredients. The

similarities between these two broad categories are far more

significant than the differences. Both are man-made additives that

give most processed food most of its taste. People usually buy a

food item the first time because of its packaging or appearance.

Taste usually determines whether they buy it again. About 90 percent

of the money that Americans now spend on food goes to buy processed

food. The canning, freezing, and dehydrating techniques used in

processing destroy most of food's flavor -- and so a vast industry

has arisen in the United States to make processed food palatable.

Without this flavor industry today's fast food would not exist. The

names of the leading American fast-food chains and their best-

selling menu items have become embedded in our popular culture and

famous worldwide. But few people can name the companies that

manufacture fast food's taste.

 

The flavor industry is highly secretive. Its leading companies will

not divulge the precise formulas of flavor compounds or the

identities of clients. The secrecy is deemed essential for

protecting the reputations of beloved brands. The fast-food chains,

understandably, would like the public to believe that the flavors of

the food they sell somehow originate in their restaurant kitchens,

not in distant factories run by other firms. A McDonald's french fry

is one of countless foods whose flavor is just a component in a

complex manufacturing process. The look and the taste of what we eat

now are frequently deceiving -- by design.

 

The Flavor Corridor

 

The New Jersey Turnpike runs through the heart of the flavor

industry, an industrial corridor dotted with refineries and chemical

plants. International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF), the world's

largest flavor company, has a manufacturing facility off Exit 8A in

Dayton, New Jersey; Givaudan, the world's second-largest flavor

company, has a plant in East Hanover. Haarmann & Reimer, the largest

German flavor company, has a plant in Teterboro, as does Takasago,

the largest Japanese flavor company. Flavor Dynamics has a plant in

South Plainfield; Frutarom is in North Bergen; Elan Chemical is in

Newark. Dozens of companies manufacture flavors in the corridor

between Teaneck and South Brunswick. Altogether the area produces

about two thirds of the flavor additives sold in the United States.

 

The IFF plant in Dayton is a huge pale-blue building with a modern

office complex attached to the front. It sits in an industrial park,

not far from a BASF plastics factory, a Jolly French Toast factory,

and a plant that manufactures Liz Claiborne cosmetics. Dozens of

tractor-trailers were parked at the IFF loading dock the afternoon I

visited, and a thin cloud of steam floated from a roof vent. Before

entering the plant, I signed a nondisclosure form, promising not to

reveal the brand names of foods that contain IFF flavors. The place

reminded me of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. Wonderful smells

drifted through the hallways, men and women in neat white lab coats

cheerfully went about their work, and hundreds of little glass

bottles sat on laboratory tables and shelves. The bottles contained

powerful but fragile flavor chemicals, shielded from light by brown

glass and round white caps shut tight. The long chemical names on

the little white labels were as mystifying to me as medieval Latin.

These odd-sounding things would be mixed and poured and turned into

new substances, like magic potions.

 

I was not invited into the manufacturing areas of the IFF plant,

where, it was thought, I might discover trade secrets. Instead I

toured various laboratories and pilot kitchens, where the flavors of

well-established brands are tested or adjusted, and where whole new

flavors are created. IFF's snack-and-savory lab is responsible for

the flavors of potato chips, corn chips, breads, crackers, breakfast

cereals, and pet food. The confectionery lab devises flavors for ice

cream, cookies, candies, toothpastes, mouthwashes, and antacids.

Everywhere I looked, I saw famous, widely advertised products

sitting on laboratory desks and tables. The beverage lab was full of

brightly colored liquids in clear bottles. It comes up with flavors

for popular soft drinks, sports drinks, bottled teas, and wine

coolers, for all-natural juice drinks, organic soy drinks, beers,

and malt liquors. In one pilot kitchen I saw a dapper food

technologist, a middle-aged man with an elegant tie beneath his

crisp lab coat, carefully preparing a batch of cookies with white

frosting and pink-and-white sprinkles. In another pilot kitchen I

saw a pizza oven, a grill, a milk-shake machine, and a french fryer

identical to those I'd seen at innumerable fast-food restaurants.

 

In addition to being the world's largest flavor company, IFF

manufactures the smells of six of the ten best-selling fine perfumes

in the United States, including Estée Lauder's Beautiful, Clinique's

Happy, Lancôme's Trésor, and Calvin Klein's Eternity. It also makes

the smells of household products such as deodorant, dishwashing

detergent, bath soap, shampoo, furniture polish, and floor wax. All

these aromas are made through essentially the same process: the

manipulation of volatile chemicals. The basic science behind the

scent of your shaving cream is the same as that governing the flavor

of your TV dinner.

 

" Natural " and " Artificial "

 

SCIENTISTS now believe that human beings acquired the sense of taste

as a way to avoid being poisoned. Edible plants generally taste

sweet, harmful ones bitter. The taste buds on our tongues can detect

the presence of half a dozen or so basic tastes, including sweet,

sour, bitter, salty, astringent, and umami, a taste discovered by

Japanese researchers -- a rich and full sense of deliciousness

triggered by amino acids in foods such as meat, shellfish,

mushrooms, potatoes, and seaweed. Taste buds offer a limited means

of detection, however, compared with the human olfactory system,

which can perceive thousands of different chemical aromas.

Indeed, " flavor " is primarily the smell of gases being released by

the chemicals you've just put in your mouth. The aroma of a food can

be responsible for as much as 90 percent of its taste.

 

The act of drinking, sucking, or chewing a substance releases its

volatile gases. They flow out of your mouth and up your nostrils, or

up the passageway in the back of your mouth, to a thin layer of

nerve cells called the olfactory epithelium, located at the base of

your nose, right between your eyes. Your brain combines the complex

smell signals from your olfactory epithelium with the simple taste

signals from your tongue, assigns a flavor to what's in your mouth,

and decides if it's something you want to eat.

 

A person's food preferences, like his or her personality, are formed

during the first few years of life, through a process of

socialization. Babies innately prefer sweet tastes and reject bitter

ones; toddlers can learn to enjoy hot and spicy food, bland health

food, or fast food, depending on what the people around them eat.

The human sense of smell is still not fully understood. It is

greatly affected by psychological factors and expectations. The mind

focuses intently on some of the aromas that surround us and filters

out the overwhelming majority. People can grow accustomed to bad

smells or good smells; they stop noticing what once seemed

overpowering. Aroma and memory are somehow inextricably linked. A

smell can suddenly evoke a long-forgotten moment. The flavors of

childhood foods seem to leave an indelible mark, and adults often

return to them, without always knowing why. These " comfort foods "

become a source of pleasure and reassurance -- a fact that fast-food

chains use to their advantage. Childhood memories of Happy Meals,

which come with french fries, can translate into frequent adult

visits to McDonald's. On average, Americans now eat about four

servings of french fries every week.

 

THE human craving for flavor has been a largely unacknowledged and

unexamined force in history. For millennia royal empires have been

built, unexplored lands traversed, and great religions and

philosophies forever changed by the spice trade. In 1492 Christopher

Columbus set sail to find seasoning. Today the influence of flavor

in the world marketplace is no less decisive. The rise and fall of

corporate empires -- of soft-drink companies, snack-food companies,

and fast-food chains -- is often determined by how their products

taste.

 

The flavor industry emerged in the mid-nineteenth century, as

processed foods began to be manufactured on a large scale.

Recognizing the need for flavor additives, early food processors

turned to perfume companies that had long experience working with

essential oils and volatile aromas. The great perfume houses of

England, France, and the Netherlands produced many of the first

flavor compounds. In the early part of the twentieth century Germany

took the technological lead in flavor production, owing to its

powerful chemical industry. Legend has it that a German scientist

discovered methyl anthranilate, one of the first artificial flavors,

by accident while mixing chemicals in his laboratory. Suddenly the

lab was filled with the sweet smell of grapes. Methyl anthranilate

later became the chief flavor compound in grape Kool-Aid. After

World War II much of the perfume industry shifted from Europe to the

United States, settling in New York City near the garment district

and the fashion houses. The flavor industry came with it, later

moving to New Jersey for greater plant capacity. Man-made flavor

additives were used mostly in baked goods, candies, and sodas until

the 1950s, when sales of processed food began to soar. The invention

of gas chromatographs and mass spectrometers -- machines capable of

detecting volatile gases at low levels -- vastly increased the

number of flavors that could be synthesized. By the mid-1960s flavor

companies were churning out compounds to supply the taste of Pop

Tarts, Bac-Os, Tab, Tang, Filet-O-Fish sandwiches, and literally

thousands of other new foods.

 

The American flavor industry now has annual revenues of about $1.4

billion. Approximately 10,000 new processed-food products are

introduced every year in the United States. Almost all of them

require flavor additives. And about nine out of ten of these

products fail. The latest flavor innovations and corporate

realignments are heralded in publications such as Chemical Market

Reporter, Food Chemical News, Food Engineering, and Food Product

Design. The progress of IFF has mirrored that of the flavor industry

as a whole. IFF was formed in 1958, through the merger of two small

companies. Its annual revenues have grown almost fifteenfold since

the early 1970s, and it currently has manufacturing facilities in

twenty countries.

 

Today's sophisticated spectrometers, gas chromatographs, and

headspace-vapor analyzers provide a detailed map of a food's flavor

components, detecting chemical aromas present in amounts as low as

one part per billion. The human nose, however, is even more

sensitive. A nose can detect aromas present in quantities of a few

parts per trillion -- an amount equivalent to about 0.000000000003

percent. Complex aromas, such as those of coffee and roasted meat,

are composed of volatile gases from nearly a thousand different

chemicals. The smell of a strawberry arises from the interaction of

about 350 chemicals that are present in minute amounts. The quality

that people seek most of all in a food -- flavor -- is usually

present in a quantity too infinitesimal to be measured in

traditional culinary terms such as ounces or teaspoons. The chemical

that provides the dominant flavor of bell pepper can be tasted in

amounts as low as 0.02 parts per billion; one drop is sufficient to

add flavor to five average-size swimming pools. The flavor additive

usually comes next to last in a processed food's list of ingredients

and often costs less than its packaging. Soft drinks contain a

larger proportion of flavor additives than most products. The flavor

in a twelve-ounce can of Coke costs about half a cent.

 

The color additives in processed foods are usually present in even

smaller amounts than the flavor compounds. Many of New Jersey's

flavor companies also manufacture these color additives, which are

used to make processed foods look fresh and appealing. Food coloring

serves many of the same decorative purposes as lipstick, eye shadow,

mascara -- and is often made from the same pigments. Titanium

dioxide, for example, has proved to be an especially versatile

mineral. It gives many processed candies, frostings, and icings

their bright white color; it is a common ingredient in women's

cosmetics; and it is the pigment used in many white oil paints and

house paints. At Burger King, Wendy's, and McDonald's coloring

agents have been added to many of the soft drinks, salad dressings,

cookies, condiments, chicken dishes, and sandwich buns.

 

Studies have found that the color of a food can greatly affect how

its taste is perceived. Brightly colored foods frequently seem to

taste better than bland-looking foods, even when the flavor

compounds are identical. Foods that somehow look off-color often

seem to have off tastes. For thousands of years human beings have

relied on visual cues to help determine what is edible. The color of

fruit suggests whether it is ripe, the color of meat whether it is

rancid. Flavor researchers sometimes use colored lights to modify

the influence of visual cues during taste tests. During one

experiment in the early 1970s people were served an oddly tinted

meal of steak and french fries that appeared normal beneath colored

lights. Everyone thought the meal tasted fine until the lighting was

changed. Once it became apparent that the steak was actually blue

and the fries were green, some people became ill.

 

The federal Food and Drug Administration does not require companies

to disclose the ingredients of their color or flavor additives so

long as all the chemicals in them are considered by the agency to be

GRAS ( " generally recognized as safe " ). This enables companies to

maintain the secrecy of their formulas. It also hides the fact that

flavor compounds often contain more ingredients than the foods to

which they give taste. The phrase " artificial strawberry flavor "

gives little hint of the chemical wizardry and manufacturing skill

that can make a highly processed food taste like strawberries.

 

A typical artificial strawberry flavor, like the kind found in a

Burger King strawberry milk shake, contains the following

ingredients: amyl acetate, amyl butyrate, amyl valerate, anethol,

anisyl formate, benzyl acetate, benzyl isobutyrate, butyric acid,

cinnamyl isobutyrate, cinnamyl valerate, cognac essential oil,

diacetyl, dipropyl ketone, ethyl acetate, ethyl amyl ketone, ethyl

butyrate, ethyl cinnamate, ethyl heptanoate, ethyl heptylate, ethyl

lactate, ethyl methylphenylglycidate, ethyl nitrate, ethyl

propionate, ethyl valerate, heliotropin, hydroxyphenyl-2-butanone

(10 percent solution in alcohol), a-ionone, isobutyl anthranilate,

isobutyl butyrate, lemon essential oil, maltol, 4-

methylacetophenone, methyl anthranilate, methyl benzoate, methyl

cinnamate, methyl heptine carbonate, methyl naphthyl ketone, methyl

salicylate, mint essential oil, neroli essential oil, nerolin, neryl

isobutyrate, orris butter, phenethyl alcohol, rose, rum ether, g-

undecalactone, vanillin, and solvent.

 

Although flavors usually arise from a mixture of many different

volatile chemicals, often a single compound supplies the dominant

aroma. Smelled alone, that chemical provides an unmistakable sense

of the food. Ethyl-2-methyl butyrate, for example, smells just like

an apple. Many of today's highly processed foods offer a blank

palette: whatever chemicals are added to them will give them

specific tastes. Adding methyl-2-pyridyl ketone makes something

taste like popcorn. Adding ethyl-3-hydroxy butanoate makes it taste

like marshmallow. The possibilities are now almost limitless.

Without affecting appearance or nutritional value, processed foods

could be made with aroma chemicals such as hexanal (the smell of

freshly cut grass) or 3-methyl butanoic acid (the smell of body

odor).

 

The 1960s were the heyday of artificial flavors in the United

States. The synthetic versions of flavor compounds were not subtle,

but they did not have to be, given the nature of most processed

food. For the past twenty years food processors have tried hard to

use only " natural flavors " in their products. According to the FDA,

these must be derived entirely from natural sources -- from herbs,

spices, fruits, vegetables, beef, chicken, yeast, bark, roots, and

so forth. Consumers prefer to see natural flavors on a label, out of

a belief that they are more healthful. Distinctions between

artificial and natural flavors can be arbitrary and somewhat absurd,

based more on how the flavor has been made than on what it actually

contains.

 

" A natural flavor, " says Terry Acree, a professor of food science at

Cornell University, " is a flavor that's been derived with an out-of-

date technology. " Natural flavors and artificial flavors sometimes

contain exactly the same chemicals, produced through different

methods. Amyl acetate, for example, provides the dominant note of

banana flavor. When it is distilled from bananas with a solvent,

amyl acetate is a natural flavor. When it is produced by mixing

vinegar with amyl alcohol and adding sulfuric acid as a catalyst,

amyl acetate is an artificial flavor. Either way it smells and

tastes the same. " Natural flavor " is now listed among the

ingredients of everything from Health Valley Blueberry Granola Bars

to Taco Bell Hot Taco Sauce.

 

A natural flavor is not necessarily more healthful or purer than an

artificial one. When almond flavor -- benzaldehyde -- is derived

from natural sources, such as peach and apricot pits, it contains

traces of hydrogen cyanide, a deadly poison. Benzaldehyde derived by

mixing oil of clove and amyl acetate does not contain any cyanide.

Nevertheless, it is legally considered an artificial flavor and

sells at a much lower price. Natural and artificial flavors are now

manufactured at the same chemical plants, places that few people

would associate with Mother Nature.

 

A Trained Nose and a Poetic Sensibility

 

THE small and elite group of scientists who create most of the

flavor in most of the food now consumed in the United States are

called " flavorists. " They draw on a number of disciplines in their

work: biology, psychology, physiology, and organic chemistry. A

flavorist is a chemist with a trained nose and a poetic sensibility.

Flavors are created by blending scores of different chemicals in

tiny amounts -- a process governed by scientific principles but

demanding a fair amount of art. In an age when delicate aromas and

microwave ovens do not easily co-exist, the job of the flavorist is

to conjure illusions about processed food and, in the words of one

flavor company's literature, to ensure " consumer likeability. " The

flavorists with whom I spoke were discreet, in keeping with the

dictates of their trade. They were also charming, cosmopolitan, and

ironic. They not only enjoyed fine wine but could identify the

chemicals that give each grape its unique aroma. One flavorist

compared his work to composing music. A well-made flavor compound

will have a " top note " that is often followed by a " dry-down " and

a " leveling-off, " with different chemicals responsible for each

stage. The taste of a food can be radically altered by minute

changes in the flavoring combination. " A little odor goes a long

way, " one flavorist told me. From the archives:

 

" The Million-Dollar Nose, " by William Langewiesche (December 2000)

Robert Parker Jr. is a plainspoken American with an astonishing gift

for judging wine. He is indefatigable and incorruptible, and his

numerical rating system is relied on by millions. His taste is

changing the way wine is made and sold. Naturally, the French hate

him. Naturally, they honor him. In order to give a processed food a

taste that consumers will find appealing, a flavorist must always

consider the food's " mouthfeel " -- the unique combination of

textures and chemical interactions that affect how the flavor is

perceived. Mouthfeel can be adjusted through the use of various

fats, gums, starches, emulsifiers, and stabilizers. The aroma

chemicals in a food can be precisely analyzed, but the elements that

make up mouthfeel are much harder to measure. How does one quantify

a pretzel's hardness, a french fry's crispness? Food technologists

are now conducting basic research in rheology, the branch of physics

that examines the flow and deformation of materials. A number of

companies sell sophisticated devices that attempt to measure

mouthfeel. The TA.XT2i Texture Analyzer, produced by the Texture

Technologies Corporation, of Scarsdale, New York, performs

calculations based on data derived from as many as 250 separate

probes. It is essentially a mechanical mouth. It gauges the most-

important rheological properties of a food -- bounce, creep,

breaking point, density, crunchiness, chewiness, gumminess,

lumpiness, rubberiness, springiness, slipperiness, smoothness,

softness, wetness, juiciness, spreadability, springback, and

tackiness.

 

Some of the most important advances in flavor manufacturing are now

occurring in the field of biotechnology. Complex flavors are being

made using enzyme reactions, fermentation, and fungal and tissue

cultures. All the flavors created by these methods -- including the

ones being synthesized by fungi -- are considered natural flavors by

the FDA. The new enzyme-based processes are responsible for

extremely true-to-life dairy flavors. One company now offers not

just butter flavor but also fresh creamy butter, cheesy butter,

milky butter, savory melted butter, and super-concentrated butter

flavor, in liquid or powder form. The development of new

fermentation techniques, along with new techniques for heating

mixtures of sugar and amino acids, have led to the creation of much

more realistic meat flavors.

 

The McDonald's Corporation most likely drew on these advances when

it eliminated beef tallow from its french fries. The company will

not reveal the exact origin of the natural flavor added to its

fries. In response to inquiries from Vegetarian Journal, however,

McDonald's did acknowledge that its fries derive some of their

characteristic flavor from " an animal source. " Beef is the probable

source, although other meats cannot be ruled out. In France, for

example, fries are sometimes cooked in duck fat or horse tallow.

 

Other popular fast foods derive their flavor from unexpected

ingredients. McDonald's Chicken McNuggets contain beef extracts, as

does Wendy's Grilled Chicken Sandwich. Burger King's BK Broiler

Chicken Breast Patty contains " natural smoke flavor. " A firm called

Red Arrow Products specializes in smoke flavor, which is added to

barbecue sauces, snack foods, and processed meats. Red Arrow

manufactures natural smoke flavor by charring sawdust and capturing

the aroma chemicals released into the air. The smoke is captured in

water and then bottled, so that other companies can sell food that

seems to have been cooked over a fire.

 

The Vegetarian Legal Action Network recently petitioned the FDA to

issue new labeling requirements for foods that contain natural

flavors. The group wants food processors to list the basic origins

of their flavors on their labels. At the moment vegetarians often

have no way of knowing whether a flavor additive contains beef,

pork, poultry, or shellfish. One of the most widely used color

additives -- whose presence is often hidden by the phrase " color

added " -- violates a number of religious dietary restrictions, may

cause allergic reactions in susceptible people, and comes from an

unusual source. Cochineal extract (also known as carmine or carminic

acid) is made from the desiccated bodies of female Dactylopius

coccus Costa, a small insect harvested mainly in Peru and the Canary

Islands. The bug feeds on red cactus berries, and color from the

berries accumulates in the females and their unhatched larvae. The

insects are collected, dried, and ground into a pigment. It takes

about 70,000 of them to produce a pound of carmine, which is used to

make processed foods look pink, red, or purple. Dannon strawberry

yogurt gets its color from carmine, and so do many frozen fruit

bars, candies, and fruit fillings, and Ocean Spray pink-grapefruit

juice drink.

 

IN a meeting room at IFF, Brian Grainger let me sample some of the

company's flavors. It was an unusual taste test -- there was no food

to taste. Grainger is a senior flavorist at IFF, a soft-spoken

chemist with graying hair, an English accent, and a fondness for

understatement. He could easily be mistaken for a British diplomat

or the owner of a West End brasserie with two Michelin stars. Like

many in the flavor industry, he has an Old World, old-fashioned

sensibility. When I suggested that IFF's policy of secrecy and

discretion was out of step with our mass-marketing, brand-conscious,

self-promoting age, and that the company should put its own logo on

the countless products that bear its flavors, instead of allowing

other companies to enjoy the consumer loyalty and affection inspired

by those flavors, Grainger politely disagreed, assuring me that such

a thing would never be done. In the absence of public credit or

acclaim, the small and secretive fraternity of flavor chemists

praise one another's work. By analyzing the flavor formula of a

product, Grainger can often tell which of his counterparts at a

rival firm devised it. Whenever he walks down a supermarket aisle,

he takes a quiet pleasure in seeing the well-known foods that

contain his flavors.

 

Grainger had brought a dozen small glass bottles from the lab. After

he opened each bottle, I dipped a fragrance-testing filter into it --

a long white strip of paper designed to absorb aroma chemicals

without producing off notes. Before placing each strip of paper in

front of my nose, I closed my eyes. Then I inhaled deeply, and one

food after another was conjured from the glass bottles. I smelled

fresh cherries, black olives, sautéed onions, and shrimp. Grainger's

most remarkable creation took me by surprise. After closing my eyes,

I suddenly smelled a grilled hamburger. The aroma was uncanny,

almost miraculous -- as if someone in the room were flipping burgers

on a hot grill. But when I opened my eyes, I saw just a narrow strip

of white paper and a flavorist with a grin.

 

 

Eric Schlosser is a correspondent for The Atlantic. His article in

this issue is adapted from his first book, Fast Food Nation, to be

published this month by Houghton Mifflin.

 

Illustrations by Francis Livingston

 

2001 by The Atlantic Monthly Company. All rights

reserved. The Atlantic Monthly; January 2001; Why McDonald's Fries

Taste So Good - 01.01 (Part Two); Volume 287, No. 1; page 50-56.

 

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/01/schlosser.htm

 

 

 

 

robalini

 

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[Guest guest]

Ew - I didn't think they tasted that good - or is this because I'm

vegetarian? I prefer vegetable potatoes - usually eat organic ones -

sometimes fry them for a special treat in EVOO or Ghee - once I've steamed

them - and then they get soft & crunchy at the same time ...........

 

Jane