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Preface The flavor of foods plays a critical role in consumer acceptability. Although sight of the food is the first impression that a consumer has, the initial aroma and the flavor once the product is eaten are important for a consumer to react positively to a product and want to eat that product again. Research is being conducted in a number of areas to understand the flavor of natural products and find ways to reproduce those flavors in processed food products. Consumers want not only convenience but also demand quality in products that are readily available. The symposium on which this book is based was organized to present current research in the area of flavor chemistry. Two chapters present overviews of both academic and industrial research in the chemistry of flavors, flavor development, and flavor stability. It is difficult to completely cover the extensive research being conducted on the industrial side because much of this information is maintained as a trade secret. There are some areas that companies will apply for patents in, such as encapsulation; however, these are not revealed until after the patents issue. It can often be several years after the patents are applied for in the United States, which is well after commercial use has commenced. By the time the patents issue, the technology is no longer new to the marketplace, although the details are new to people not involved in the development of the technology. Only three chapters in the book are from the industrial side and the scope of these is somewhat limited by what the companies sponsoring them will allow to be printed. On the academic side, researchers are looking into very specific areas, which will help us better understand what compounds are most important for the perception of a particular flavor, how they change, and the pathways to produce specific compounds that can contribute characteristic flavors to products. One of the interesting areas that is being researched is to understand which individual compounds in a particular flavor are most important to the consumer's perception of that flavor. This area of gas chromatography-olfactometry in which the compounds in a flavor are separated by gas chromatography and then detected by the human nose is providing insight into the compounds that seem to have the greatest impact on sensory perception. Out of several hundred compounds that might make up a natural flavor, not all are of equal importance to the human perception of the flavor. This methodology is being used to try to identify the most important compounds. This information can be used when trying to replicate the flavor of a product to be used in other applications. Taking this idea one step further is to analyze the flavor compounds that are released when a person is chewing a product to compare to the aroma of the product that is sensed before consumption. One chapter addresses the research that is being conducted to try to understand flavor release while eating to fully
ix In Flavor Chemistry; Risch, S., et al.; ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2000.
recognize the compounds that the brain is sensing to give us the flavor that we identify with the product. The research into flavors and flavor development continues to try to find new and better flavors for the consumer. This book addresses a variety of those areas to give an idea of the state of the art in flavor chemistry. We thank all of the speakers who took the time to commit their presentations from a symposium into chapters for this book. SARA J. RISCH
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x In Flavor Chemistry; Risch, S., et al.; ACS Symposium Series; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 2000.
