Cover story
The h probl problem prob prrobl oblem lem i iilllll After vowing to go natural, food brands face a shortage of the favored flavor MELODY M. BOMGARDNER, C&EN WEST COAST
In brief Vanilla is perhaps the world’s most popular flavor, but less than 1% of it comes from a fully natural source, the vanilla orchid. In 2015, a host of big food brands, led by Nestlé, vowed to use only natural flavors in products marketed in the U.S.—just as a shortage of natural vanilla was emerging. In the following pages, C&EN explains how flavor firms are working to supply natural alternatives that can help satisfy consumers’ cravings for vanilla. In an effort to shore up vanilla supplies, these same companies are working with orchid growers in Madagascar to ensure the future of sustainable, high-quality vanilla production.
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oday, vanilla is so well-known that its very name means “common.” But for centuries, vanilla was a rare, New World flavor enjoyed mainly by European elites. That changed in 1841 thanks to a 12-yearold boy wielding a tiny stick.
Edmond Albius was an enslaved worker in the Flavor companies are working feverishly to French colony of Réunion who, after close inspec- find additional sources of natural vanillin and tion of the vanilla orchid Vanilla planifolia, figured launch initiatives to boost the quality and quantiout how to hand-pollinate its flower to produce ty of bean-derived vanilla. Suppliers such as Symvanilla beans. rise, International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF), Albius used the stick to push up a flap in the Solvay, and Borregaard are using their expertise orchid flower called the rostellum and press the along the full spectrum of natural to synthetic to pollen-coated anther against the female part, or help food makers arrive at the best vanilla flavor stigma. Until Albius’s discovery, vanilla had been for each product. successfully cultivated only in its native southFood makers, meanwhile, are confronting skyeastern Mexico, home of its pollinator, the Melirocketing costs for natural vanilla, reformulation pona bee. It was there that the Spanish explorer challenges, complicated labeling laws, and diffiHernán Cortés famously witnessed the Aztec Em- cult questions about what is “natural.” peror Montezuma drinking a chocolate beverage Although consumer disdain for artificial inflavored with vanilla. gredients has been building for years, credit—or In Réunion, output of vanilla blame—for last year’s wave of soared thanks to the Albius “all natural” announcements method, and orchid cultivation goes to Nestlé, which in Febexpanded to nearby Madagasruary 2015 was the first major car. Today, about 80% of the brand to announce plans to world’s natural vanilla comes eliminate artificial additives from smallholder farms in from chocolate candy sold in Madagascar. There, locals conthe U.S. The announcement tinue to pollinate orchids by upended the mass-market hand and cure the beans in the chocolate industry practice traditional fashion. of adding synthetic vanillin It didn’t take long for vanilla to counter the bitterness of demand to exceed supply from cocoa. the farms of Madagascar. In the “When Nestlé announced it 1800s and 1900s, chemists took would go all-natural, that just over from botanists to expand opened the floodgates,” obsupply of the flavor. Vanillin, serves John Leffingwell, head the main flavor component of of flavor and fragrance market cured vanilla beans, was synresearch firm Leffingwell & thesized variously from pine Associates. “Other brands bark, clove oil, rice bran, and weren’t going to do anything lignin. until a major player pushed it. —Carol McBride, U.S. vanilla With Nestlé being the biggest Rhône-Poulenc, now Solvay, category manager, Symrise in the world, everyone had to commercialized a pure petrochemical route in the 1970s. In follow.” recent years, of the roughly 18,000 metric tons Food and flavor companies have been quietly of vanilla flavor produced annually, about 85% is reformulating products and sourcing ingredients vanillin synthesized from the petrochemical prethat can carry a natural claim for at least a decade, cursor guaiacol. Most of the rest is from lignin. Leffingwell points out. Indeed, Nestlé first cut But the traditional vanilla bean is starting to out artificial additives from its U.K. confections enjoy a renaissance, thanks to consumer demand in 2012. At the time, the company credited “a for all-natural foods and beverages. Last year, a seven-year research and development program string of giant food companies, including General that has led to more than 80 artificial ingredients Mills, Hershey’s, Kellogg’s, and Nestlé, vowed being replaced with alternatives.” to eliminate artificial flavors and other additives For a big food firm, however, switching to natfrom many foods sold in the U.S. ural vanilla is akin to squeezing an elephant into There is a problem, however: World produca Volkswagen. While the ink was drying on those tion of natural vanilla is tiny and has been falling all-natural announcements last year, output of in recent years. Less than 1% of vanilla flavor Madagascar vanilla beans had plummeted to comes from actual vanilla orchids. With demand 1,100 metric tons, about half the normal harvest. on the upswing, trade in the coveted flavor is out That, along with rising demand, caused prices to of balance. more than double to roughly $225 per kg by the
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“The amount of all the vanilla beans in the world is not sufficient to flavor everything that everyone wants to flavor with vanilla.”
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It’s a vanilla world
Satisfying consumers’ craving for vanilla flavor requires synthetic, semisynthetic, and natural versions of the vanillin molecule.
Petroleum
Spruce tree lignin CH3O
Corn sugar OH
HO Coniferyl alcohol
OH O
OH OH
OH CH3O
O CH3O
HO Guaiacol
OH Glucose
H
HO Vanillin
Vanilla beans Rice bran
Clove oil HO HO OH
HO
HO
HO Ferulic acid
middle of last year, according to Mintec, a raw material price-tracking firm. Cured vanilla beans contain only 2% of extractable vanilla flavor, meaning prices for pure vanilla reached an eye-popping $11,000 per kg. The industry is closely watching this year’s harvest, hoping to see vanilla costs eventually return to pre2012 levels of about $25 per kg for beans or $1,250 for vanilla. Even that is a hefty price tag for one of the world’s most popular flavors. In the U.S., 2% of food products and 3% of beverages launched in the past 12 months were advertised as vanilla-flavored, according to the market trends tracker Mintel. Symrise, which sources natural vanilla and supplies synthetic vanillin, says 18,000 global products contain vanilla flavor. “The amount of all the vanilla beans in the world is not sufficient to flavor everything that everyone wants to flavor with vanilla,” says Carol McBride, U.S. vanilla category manager at Symrise. Dairy products such as ice cream and yogurt have relied on natural vanilla for many years, McBride points out. In the U.S., Food
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CH3O
C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | SEPTEMBER 12, 2016
Eugenol
& Drug Administration rules state that vanilla ice cream must get its flavor from natural vanilla. If the flavor comes partially or fully from another source, the company must stamp “vanilla flavored” or “artificial vanilla” on the front of the package, a likely turnoff to consumers. Other foods don’t get that level of government oversight. For makers of confectionary items, baked goods, and breakfast cereals, it’s consumer hankering for all-natural ingredients that is now having an impact, according to McBride. For nondairy products, “the labeling and brand message of the product usually determines the type of vanilla used,” she says. For example, Nabisco’s Nilla Wafers cookies, no one’s idea of an all-natural product, needn’t make a claim on the front of the box. As the ingredients list on the back reveals, the “Nilla” flavor comes from “natural and artificial flavor.” In contrast, Ultimate Vanilla Wafers from grocery retailer Trader Joe’s boast “flecks of Madagascar vanilla beans” on the label. Vanilla is also an important component of flavors such as chocolate, strawberry,
H
O O OCH3 OH Vanillin glucoside
caramel, and coconut. It rounds out the taste by adding creaminess, balancing sweetness, and toning or masking bitterness and acidity. When vanilla flavor is used in chocolate, it becomes part of a proprietary recipe that makes a Nestlé bar taste different from one made by Hershey’s. “It’s significantly more challenging to convert an existing product to natural ingredients than to create a new product with natural ingredients,” says Liz Caselli-Mechael, manager of corporate communications for Nestlé. “Vanilla is among the most challenging flavors to match because the vanilla wheel has dozens of flavors.” A flavor wheel is how the food community tracks the specific attributes of an ingredient, food, or beverage. The vanilla wheel used by the flavor company Fona International measures fully 29 distinct flavor characteristics. They are grouped into 10 main categories: smoky, spicy, botanical, sulfury, sweet, creamy, medicinal, cooked, fatty, and floral. Like wine, natural vanilla grown in different places—Madagascar, Mexico, or
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O CH3O
O
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In Madagascar, vanilla orchids must be hand-pollinated, making vanilla beans a labor-intensive crop. Tahiti—has different taste and potency profiles. Madagascar vanilla, typically called Bourbon vanilla, is highly sought for its rummy taste and sweet aroma. Food and flavor firms rely on highly trained tasters to help with the transition to natural. “We’ll perform multiple tests to get as close a sensory match to the existing product as we can. That includes taste, aroma, and texture,” Caselli-Mechael says. Potential matches are then tested with consumers. The process can take months or even years. Food companies that abandon synthetic vanillin can turn to natural vanillin from sources other than vanilla beans. For example, Solvay makes Rhovanil Natural vanillin by fermenting ferulic acid, a by-product of rice bran oil, using a proprietary strain of yeast. The French flavor company Mane uses a different raw material, eugenol from clove oil, to make natural vanillin. In a review of vanillin bioconversion processes, Nethaji Gallage and Birger Møller, plant scientists at the University of Copenhagen, found that both ferulic acid and eugenol are pricey raw materials (Mol. Plant 2015, DOI: 10.1016/j.molp.2014.11.008). Production of eugenol is industrialized because the molecule is used to produce various flavors and fragrances, but its price tag is still around $50 per kg, the researchers say. Naturally extracted ferulic acid costs even more, around $180 per kg. Compared with synthesizing vanillin from petroleum or extracting it from vanilla beans, bioconversion via yeast and bacteria presents limitations, Gallage and Møller note. High concentrations of
both ferulic acid and eugenol are toxic to most microbes, as is vanillin. Indeed, all three compounds are made by plants as antimicrobials. What’s more, yields are generally low because the microbes also produce undesirable vanillin alcohol and vanillic acid. Obtaining a vanillin yield of more than a few grams per liter of fermentation broth requires specialized or mutated strains and often lengthy incubation periods. The biotechnology firm Evolva developed a process to get around high feedstock costs and toxicity problems by feeding glucose to a genetically modified microbe that produces vanillin glucoside. The sugar group makes vanillin much less toxic to the production organism but must be removed to get vanillin. It is not yet clear whether vanillin made from genetically modified organisms will be adopted or marketed. Because the microbe that expresses Evolva’s vanillin is considered a processing aid, a product made with the flavor would not fall under U.S. GMO labeling requirements and could lend itself to no-artificial-ingredient claims. On the other hand, the Non-GMO Project says foods containing ingredients made with synthetic biology will not be allowed to carry its voluntary label. Evolva licensed its technology to IFF in 2014 for commercialization and distribution, but flavor industry insiders haven’t heard much about it since. Leffingwell notes that IFF could be concerned about consumer backlash to the use of GMOs. IFF and Evolva did not respond to C&EN’s request for an interview. The allure of nonpetrochemical vanillin is that it can be used in foods that claim “no artificial ingredients.” For now, the alternatives’ big drawback is their high price—generally several hundred dollars per kilogram. That’s cheaper than vanilla but a lot more pricey than synthetic vanillin at around $10 per kg. Food makers that have disavowed petroleum-derived ingredients but aren’t looking for an all-natural label can turn to Norway’s Borregaard, which offers a vanillin that is derived from plants but is much less pricey than either real vanilla or other alternatives. Borregaard operates a large “biorefinery” where it mainly converts spruce trees into specialty chemicals and cellulose. But it finds itself with lots of softwood lignin, a large biopolymer made up of close to 90% coniferyl alcohol. Heat and pressure in the refinery convert the lignin to vanillin. As recently as the 1990s, much of the world’s vanillin came from lignin in the waste stream of pulp and paper firms. But
the process fell out of favor as papermakers changed their methods to reduce waste. That left Borregaard the only major firm to make vanillin from wood. Although Borregaard’s vanillin is considered artificial by regulators, many food makers prefer it to vanillin made from petrochemical feedstocks because it is considered sustainable, says Amie Byholt, the company’s U.S. director for sales and marketing. It is made from a renewable raw material in a facility that uses 90% of its biomass in products and the rest for energy. There is also a taste difference, Byholt says, thanks to tiny amounts of other aromatic components that come from
What is natural? Companies have to follow specific regulatory guidelines to call their flavors natural.
In the U.S. “The term natural flavor or natural flavoring means the essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis, which contains the flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof, whose significant function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional,” according to FDA.
In the European Union “ ‘Natural flavouring substance’ shall mean a flavouring substance obtained by appropriate physical, enzymatic or microbiological processes from material of vegetable, animal or microbiological origin either in the raw state or after processing for human consumption by one or more of the traditional food preparation processes listed in Annex II. Natural flavouring substances correspond to substances that are naturally present and have been identified in nature,” according to FoodDrinkEurope, an EU industry trade group. Annex II processes include heating, smoking, curing, maturing, drying, marinating, extraction, extrusion, or a combination of such processes.
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lignin. “They add to the intensity and the roundness of the aroma profile, in effect giving it a stronger and creamier flavor compared to the equivalent amount of petroleum-derived vanillin.” For companies that want to use natural or nonpetroleum flavors but can’t stomach high prices for vanilla beans, vanillin from alternative sources can be a practical choice, says McBride of Symrise. But to truly participate in the natural trend, sport an organic label, or sell in specialty retailers, food makers have to commit to the roller coaster of natural vanilla. “People are trying to live through the current crisis so they can deliver that taste that consumers love and not have to always reformulate,” McBride observes. To help prevent future vanilla crises, Symrise, Givaudan, Mane, and IFF have set up grower programs in Madagascar. The country’s northeastern, or Sava, region has the world’s best combination of climate and farm labor economy for vanilla production. McBride says the programs aim to help smallholder farmers maintain consistent quality and a sustainable supply. For example, cash-pressed farmers often pick beans early. “But they may not realize that immature beans have lower quality and vanillin content,” McBride says. “The
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American Chemical Society
Symrise teams work to promote security for the farmers so they know we will pay a fair price to diminish the fears that lead to early picking.” Symrise set up its Madagascar operations in 2006 and now reaches 7,000 farmers. Sustainability programs help farmers plant crops such as cocoa, cloves, and cinnamon along with vanilla vines on their land. The programs train farmers to preserve soil fertility and sponsor education, health care, and food programs. Vanilla is a very labor-intensive crop. It takes 600 hand-pollinated blossoms to produce 1 kg of cured beans. Beans are picked while still green and sold to fermentation plants where workers sort, blanch, steam, and dry the beans in the sun. They are then sorted again, dried in the shade, and fermented while workers continually evaluate their aroma and inspect each bean for quality. Farmers are increasing their income from vanilla by attaining valuable certifications such as organic, fair-trade, and Rainforest Alliance Certified. But it is difficult for them to plant more orchids because their farms are often quite small. In a best-case scenario, “everyone just plants five more vines,” McBride says. Even then, it takes four years for those vines to reach maturity.
To meet growing demand, the vanilla industry may need an innovation akin to Albius’s hand-pollinating technique. Again, the secret may be in the vanilla plant itself. In 2014, Møller discovered that specific plant cells in the waxy interior of green vanilla beans enzymatically transform free ferulic acid into vanillin glucoside (Nat. Commun., DOI: 10.1038/ncomms5037). The cells express a gene that codes for the active enzyme—vanillin synthase. Møller was able to use variations of the gene to produce vanillin in vitro, as well as in vivo in a modified strain of yeast and in modified tobacco and barley plants. The insight could be used by plant geneticists to find markers that help select vanilla orchid varieties that produce more vanillin or to develop transgenic plants with high vanillin synthase activity. Another option would be to engineer yeast to make vanillin from raw materials such as molasses, which contains ferulic acid, Møller suggests. Regardless of what technologies may arise to produce more natural vanillin, McBride says the core challenge remains. “We need to grow more vanilla beans. We need to safeguard the sustainability of vanilla so that we can enjoy vanilla for generations to come.” ◾
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