How to know when aromas and flavorings are natural and not artificial?

[Cooking Goddess]

...Sure, artificial vanilla and some others are good, but you absolutely cannot go wrong by making everything from scratch, from good-quality basic ingredients. You wouldn't be here if you didn't like to cook, after all...

I thought I "liked to cook" until you said to make everything from scratch. I guess I'm going wrong?

We've had the "scratch cooking" discussion in many other threads. Most of us, in spite of loving to cook, do not consider an occasional shortcut to be anathema to "scratch" cooking because sometimes you have other itches that need scratching. Kids in sports, other hobbies, family obligations - mostly things that can be summed up by the term "a life".

 

[RPCookin]

I thought I "liked to cook" until you said to make everything from scratch. I guess I'm going wrong?

We've had the "scratch cooking" discussion in many other threads. Most of us, in spite of loving to cook, do not consider an occasional shortcut to be anathema to "scratch" cooking because sometimes you have other itches that need scratching. Kids in sports, other hobbies, family obligations - mostly things that can be summed up by the term "a life".

Yep. I'm not spending all day in the kitchen making home made ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, jams and jellies, peanut butter, or many of the other condiment type things used day to day. Some of those things are nice to make on an occasional basis, but there are perfectly good commercial offerings that I'm more than happy to use daily.

I enjoy cooking, but I like to think that I have a life outside of the kitchen too.

 

[outRIAAge]

Additionally, there are several forms of sugar, including sucrose, glucose and fructose. So I would expect to see different descriptions of sugar on package labels. Please explain why you have a problem with that.

Certainly, and the word you're looking for is obfuscation - deliberately making ingredient lists incomprehensible, to hide added sugar and lots more.

Do you think that everybody who reads "made with 100% fruit juice" knows that there may only be trace-amounts of fruit juice in it? Sucrose, fructose, glucose and so on are distinct types of sugars, with different properties. "Evaporated cane juice" is just hidden sugar.

 

[Cheryl J]

Certainly, and the word you're looking for is obfuscation - deliberately making ingredient lists incomprehensible, to hide added sugar and lots more.

Do you think that everybody who reads "made with 100% fruit juice" knows that there may only be trace-amounts of fruit juice in it? Sucrose, fructose, glucose and so on are distinct types of sugars, with different properties. "Evaporated cane juice" is just hidden sugar.

Oh my gosh, outRIAAge....do you really think that the majority of us here don't know that??

 

[GotGarlic]

Certainly, and the word you're looking for is obfuscation - deliberately making ingredient lists incomprehensible, to hide added sugar and lots more.

Um, no. The word is "precision," as I have already said.

 

[Kaneohegirlinaz]

Ummmm,
you guys have kinda chased off the OP,
don't ya think?

 

[outRIAAge]

Oh my gosh, outRIAAge....do you really think that the majority of us here don't know that??

Don't be silly, but we're a self-selecting knowledgeable bunch, unlike my diabetic sister who had to have explained to her that "evaporated cane juice" is just sugar, plain and simple, lots of it.

That said, I've only been here a few weeks, and I notice that my posts are not going down well.

 

[AlexR]

jennyema,

Further to your last post, I thought I actually should go back and open the two links you sent (i.e. overcome my prejudice).
I noted the following quote from the first link :
“This explains why tasters kept describing real vanilla as “boozy,” an adjective rarely applied to fake vanilla. But they also found the real stuff nutty, spicy, and more complex”.
And the following two from the second:
“After tallying up all the scores, there was one immediately obvious fact: with cooked items like cookies and a cooked ice cream base, tasters could not decide which type of vanilla was best”.
“On the other hand, in a subsequent test in which real vanilla was tasted against extract in a cold, uncooked preparation (in this case, as the primary flavoring in eggnog), the real extract came out as the clear, nearly unanimous winner thanks to a more intense flavor and increased complexity”.
The inference is clear: when cooking or baking, the natural extract appears to be an unjustified extravagance.
However, if the dish is *not* cooked, the natural extract is (or can be) better, more complex, and worth the money.

This reminds me of an olive oil tasting I once read about. The differences were great, but when used in cooking they largely disappeared.
Therefore, getting back to my original question, if I had truffle oil with the real natural extract, which labelling unfortunately won’t tell me, I would use it in salads or as a condiment, but *not* as a cooking ingredient.

Best regards,
Alex R.

 

[tenspeed]

Ingredient listing in the US consists of lies and dammed lies. "Truffle flavor" or any other "flavor" is nonsense. Read carefully, because the industry has 30+ descriptions for (e.g.) sugar that never mention the word, like "evaporated cane juice" (that one courtesy of Chobani "yogurt").

Can you provide any examples of "lies and damned lies"? Calling sugar "evaporated cane juice" may not be clear to the uninformed, it is not a lie.

Evaporated Cane Juice: Sugar In Disguise? : The Salt : NPR

By the way, manufacturers of high fructose corn syrup can't call their product sugar, although they have been trying.

FDA Rules Corn Syrup Can't Change Its Name To Corn Sugar : The Salt : NPR