Nature-identical aroma

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A nature-identical aroma is a composition of chemically defined aroma substances that have the same molecular shape as naturally occurring aroma substances - i.e. are chemically identical - but are not (or only partially) obtained from naturally occurring substances.

Nature-identical flavorings are therefore completely or at least partially produced by chemical synthesis .

Legal definition

The term nature-identical flavoring is legally defined in Germany in the Flavor Ordinance . According to this, nature-identical aroma substances are chemically defined substances with aroma properties that are obtained by chemical synthesis or by isolation using chemical processes and are chemically identical to a substance that occurs in a raw material of plant or animal origin (...) . Nature-identical flavorings are therefore based on a natural model in nature, but are produced synthetically. Chemical processes during or after the extraction of a natural flavoring substance that lead to a (even temporary) change in the molecular structure legally produce a nature-identical flavoring substance, not a natural one. Most of the nature-identical flavorings are produced synthetically.

use

Food is flavored for a variety of reasons. On the one hand to make food tastier, on the other hand to compensate for the loss of flavors in the manufacturing process.

For this purpose, nature-identical flavoring substances are often used because, unlike artificial flavoring substances, they do not have to be explicitly approved for flavoring food - they are chemically the same as natural substances - and the purity requirements are correspondingly high. The consumer is often critical of the nature-identical aroma and prefers the natural aroma . It should not be ignored that when using nature-identical aromas, the toxic compounds naturally occurring in aroma-providing plants (see aroma ) do not occur due to the manufacturing process.

Financial reasons and availability also play a decisive role. So it is e.g. B. not possible to cover the entire need for strawberry flavor for yoghurt, desserts, ice cream , candies, etc. with natural strawberry extracts. Another example is the vanilla aroma : pure vanillin from Bourbon vanilla is very expensive and its availability is limited, which is why you have to switch to synthetic vanillin as a natural identity. From the combination of a few to a few dozen compounds that are decisive for the aroma impression, the flavorist can combine an aroma that can come very close to the natural aroma of several hundred substances.

criticism

The increasing aromatization of food is controversial. Critics argue that people, especially children, are increasingly forgetting the taste of “real food”.

Differentiation possibilities to natural aroma

There are a few chemical-analytical methods to prove the use of a nature-identical flavoring substance. According to the legal provisions in Germany, the term "natural aroma" may only be used when labeling foods if a natural aroma has been used in the sense of the Aroma Ordinance . The difficult traceability and immense price differences can lead to misuse of the labeling.

This is facilitated by the fact that nature-identical flavoring substances are chemically the same as their natural models and that established instrumental-analytical methods such as gas chromatography or gas chromatography-mass spectrometry are not sufficient to differentiate between natural flavoring substances and their natural identities. In order to distinguish them, one benefits on the one hand from the fact that many natural substances occur chirally , including some aromatic substances, whereas the nature-identical aromatic substances are usually formed as a racemate through chemical synthesis. By means of an enantiomeric analysis, some aroma-effective esters , lactones and terpenes can be clearly distinguished. This analysis method cannot be used for the large number of achiral aromatic substances. Furthermore, enantioselective syntheses and racemate resolution could cause increasing difficulties here in the future.

A powerful way of differentiating achiral flavoring substances is their isotopic composition , since natural flavoring substances differ from nature-identical substances in the proportion of the stable isotopes. The isotopic composition of the stable isotopes of hydrogen , carbon and oxygen is primarily used . This is significantly influenced by the photosynthesis type of the plant (C3 / C4 / CAM), chemical-physical and biochemical processes as well as the geographical location. The isotope ratios can be analyzed using isotope ratio mass spectrometry . As more powerful isotope technique is the deuterium - nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy ( SNIF-NMR ) application to the basis of the deuterium distribution in flavor molecule a distinction between natural and nature-identical permit. These techniques are also used to determine the origin of food and wine analysis.

See also

literature

  • Belitz / Grosch: Textbook of Food Chemistry 4th revised. Ed .; Springer-Berlin 1992. ISBN 3-540-55449-1
  • Schmidt / Roßmann / Werner: Stable Isotope Ratio Analysis in Quality Control of Flavors ; Flavors, pp. 539 ff; Wiley-VCH Weinheim 1998; ISBN 3-527-29786-3

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