bk-2008-0988.pr001

Preface

Downloaded by 106.17.189.96 on June 3, 2018 | https://pubs.acs.org Publication Date: September 30, 2008 | doi: 10.1021/bk-2008-0988.pr001

The investigation of nature is an infinite pasture-ground where all may graze, and where the more bite, the longer the grass grows, the sweeter is its flavor, and the more it nourishes. Aldous Huxley

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As we near the end of the first decade of the 21 century, where will the investigations of food and beverage flavor lead? Certainly, the exponential growth in identification of new flavor compounds, ex perienced during the 1970s and 1980s, has slowed. And the advances in separation science that made identification of these new compounds possible have led to the relatively mature fields of gas chromatography and high-performance liquid chromatography. However, the pastureground for new discoveries is still growing and nourishing new flavor chemists and new developments in flavor chemistry. These proceedings, based on a symposium held at the Pacific Region of the American Chemical Society in December 2005, in Honolulu, Hawaii provide excellent evidence for the future growth and the needs for new under standings of flavor chemistry. In the first section of this book (Chapters 1-4) the focus is on new and improved approaches for identifying and quantifying flavor compounds. At the time of the symposium and publication of this proceedings, we are well into the "-omics" (including metabolomics) era of science; the need to rapidly measure large numbers of compounds simultaneously while still providing the selectivity and sensitivity needed to measure flavor compounds present in low ppb and ppt levels is pushing analytical chemists to the limits of the currently available technology. As shown in these chapters, developments in multi dimensional separations, new chromatographic stationary phases, diverse sensors for rapidly detecting multiple compounds, and the ability to

xi Tamura et al.; Food Flavor ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2008.


quantitatively measure interactions between flavors and matrix com ponents are among the areas of current and future development. Flavor chemistry and formation are the focus of the next two sections (Chapters 5-16). Understanding how agricultural practices and food processing conditions affect the synthesis and degradation of flavors is of growing interest as scientists and consumers continue to recognize that conditions which provide the most stable products for storage or transportation are not always the same as those conditions that provide the maximum desirable flavor qualities. New food sources for modern consumers, often based on foods of indigenous diets, also continue to contribute to increasing diversity of flavors and unique chemistries. Finally, identification of genes and enzymes involved in flavor formation in foods, such as strawberries, will lead to improved varieties of fruits and vegetables as well as coming full circle to improving our understanding of how agricultural and food processing conditions can be optimized to maximize expression and activity of genes and enzymes for improved flavor attributes. Although flavor chemists have often previously focused on sensory properties of individual compounds, the challenges that scientists are currently trying to address are understanding how sensory perception of flavor compounds changes as a function of interactions with other flavor compounds and with other nonvolatile matrix components. The fourth section of these proceedings (Chapters 17-21) focuses on these complex interactions as well as on the sensory factors that influence consumer choice in selecting foods with maximal nutritional value. Finally, in the last section (Chapters 22-23), there is increasing recognition that the biological activity of essential oils and flavors ex tends to not only activation of sensory receptors for taste, aroma, color, and mouthfeel, but also that many flavor compounds can also provide beneficial health effects in preventing degenerative diseases such as heart disease and cancer. We hope that readers of these proceedings will come to agree with Aldous Huxley that the investigation of flavor chemistry is an infinite pasture-ground that continues to thrive and provide new insights and challenges for analytical chemists, food scientists, biochemists, and geneticists working toward the common goal of understanding and improving food and beverage flavor. We also hope that these chapters may provide inspiration to a new generation of scientists who will grow and expand the field even further.

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Acknowledgments The symposium and book would not have been possible without the financial support of: The A C S Division of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, Inc., Firmenich SA, Japan Tobacco Incorporated, Ogawa & Company, Ltd., Suntory Ltd., Takasago International Corporation, Takata Koryo Company, Ltd., and T. Hasegawa Company, Ltd. We are grateful for their generous contributions.


Hirotoshi Tamura Department of Biochemistry and Food Science Kagawa University 2393 Miki-Cho Kita-Gun Kagawa 761-0795 Japan

Susan E . Ebeler Department of Viticulture and Enology University of California One Shields Avenue Davis, C A 95616

Kikue Kubota Laboratory of Food Chemistry Department of Nutrition and Food Science Ochanomizu University 2-1-1 Otsuka Bunkyo-ku Tokyo 112-8610 Japan

Gary R. Takeoka Western Regional Research Center Agricultural Research Service U.S. Department of Agriculture 800 Buchanan Street Albany, C A 94710

xiii Tamura et al.; Food Flavor ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2008.

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