- 2 days ago
Over Thanksgiving weekend in 2011, Morley Safer reported on the multibillion-dollar food flavoring industry and how supertasters used secret formulas to "hijack" our brains with irresistible flavors.
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"60 Minutes" is the most successful television broadcast in history. Offering hard-hitting investigative reports, interviews, feature segments and profiles of people in the news, the broadcast began in 1968 and is still a hit, over 50 seasons later, regularly making Nielsen's Top 10.
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00:0060 Minutes Rewind
00:03As the Thanksgiving weekend comes to a close, you may feel as overstuffed as that turkey you ate.
00:14And if you're overweight, and the chances are you are, it's probably because you eat too much, too much of the wrong stuff.
00:22Most of the wrong stuff we eat comes in a bottle, a can, or a box, food that's been processed.
00:28Much of that food has been flavored.
00:31The flavoring industry is the enabler of the food processing business,
00:35which depends on it to create a craving for everything from soda pop to chicken soup.
00:41It is Willy Wonka and his chocolate factory as a multi-billion dollar industry, an industry cloaked in secrecy.
00:49But recently, Givaudan, the largest flavoring company in the world, allowed us in to see them work their magic.
00:58So definitely an aroma, the Mandarin Dancy Tangerine.
01:03Real mild, though. Not in your face.
01:05These are super sniffers, super tasters.
01:09And more bitter.
01:10On the prowl, the Special Forces first responders to the call for the next best taste.
01:17The Mandarin Oats are fantastic.
01:19Yeah.
01:20They're braving the wilds of a citrus grove in Riverside, California, where Jim Hassel, whose nose and palate are legendary, leads a Givaudan team on a taste safari.
01:32Big game hunters in search of the next great taste in soft drinks.
01:37Their inspiration, the greatest flavorist of them all, Mother Nature.
01:41Seeing everything that's available really just drives the whole creative process.
01:47Like an artist going to Rome or something.
01:49Correct. Correct.
01:50But the ultimate purpose is to sell more soft drinks or whatever.
01:56That's what we're in the business of.
01:58Telling flavors.
02:00Let's go sniffing.
02:01Our perception of taste is largely located in the nose, but described in the language of music.
02:09Do you get like a tropical note, a little bit of papaya?
02:12Yep.
02:12Potentially.
02:13Yeah.
02:13A cotton candy note.
02:14Cotton candy a little bit.
02:15They're plotting how to move the flavors they find in this grove to your supermarket shelf.
02:22And then on to your stomach.
02:24I can see it in a squash drink.
02:25I can see it in a water, flavored water.
02:29And I also can see it in a twist on an orange carbonated beverage.
02:32When they find something they like, they extract its flavor molecules from the fruit on the tree.
02:38Then back in the lab, they mimic Mother Nature's molecules with chemicals.
02:43Essentially what you do is you take whatever this smells like.
02:46Right.
02:47And copy it.
02:49Right.
02:49You can exact anything.
02:50And then I suppose you could, if you choose to, you could quote unquote improve on it.
02:54Yes.
02:55All the time.
02:56The holy grail, a flavor so good you can't resist it.
03:01In our fruit flavors we're talking about, we want, you know, a burst in the beginning
03:05and maybe a finish that doesn't linger too much so that you want more of it.
03:09You don't want a long linger because you're not going to eat more of it if it lingers.
03:12Ah.
03:13So I see it's going to be a quick fix.
03:16And then.
03:17Have more.
03:18And then have more.
03:19But that suggests something else.
03:21Exactly.
03:21Which is called addiction.
03:24Exactly.
03:24You're trying to create an addictive taste.
03:27That's a good word.
03:28Or something that they want to go back for again and again.
03:32Food companies know that flavor is what makes repeat customers.
03:36So they commissioned Givaudan to create what they hope will be a mouthwatering taste.
03:42Givaudan may be the biggest multinational you've never heard of.
03:46The Swiss company employs almost 9,000 people in 45 countries, providing tastiness to just
03:53about every cuisine imaginable.
03:56There's a lot of secrecy involved in your profession, correct?
03:59Our intellectual property are our formulas.
04:02Without that we have nothing.
04:03So there's a lot of secrecy.
04:04You really don't want anyone to know.
04:06My world is making things taste good.
04:08Soda pop and chewing gum flavorist Michelle Hagen has helped Givaudan and the food companies
04:15make billions with her secret formulas.
04:18I create thousands of flavors so I need somewhere to put them.
04:22And I have a lot of flavors in here.
04:26What are these?
04:27So here are some oranges and tangerines.
04:30750 flavors of orange, tangerine, mandarins.
04:34Raspberry is one of my favorite.
04:36I can't even fit all my raspberries on here.
04:39How different can raspberries be?
04:41Oh, very different.
04:43Very different.
04:43Oh yeah.
04:44You can make them jammy.
04:45You can make them sweet.
04:47You can make them floral.
04:48You can make them seedy.
04:50It's endless really.
04:52And the flavor ingredients might not have ever met a raspberry.
04:56I have butyric acid artificial and then I have butyric acid natural.
05:00All flavors are combinations of chemicals.
05:03Artificial flavors are largely man-made.
05:06Natural flavors come from nature, but not necessarily from what the label implies.
05:12For example.
05:13Strawberry creations.
05:15Strawberry and vanilla flavor can come from the gland in a beaver's backside.
05:20So what we do is just manipulate them and create with them
05:25and give the impression of, you know, papaya or the strawberry.
05:30Hagen is an illusionist.
05:32She's even created a flavor that mimics the taste and smell of an old oak tree.
05:38To give whiskey a little bit more depth sometimes.
05:40A young whiskey.
05:42Oh, to give the taste of the barrel.
05:43How it was supposed to have been aged in, correct?
05:46Yes.
05:46Yeah, you can add some cask notes, some oak notes.
05:50Okay, here we go.
05:50Hassel and Hagen let us in on the alchemy of inventing a new flavor.
05:55This one inspired by a Hong Kong kumquat that the team found not in Hong Kong,
06:01but back in Riverside.
06:03It's a process using hundreds of different notes until they've created a symphony of taste.
06:11I mean, with a name like Hong Kong kumquat, you really have to have something going on, I think.
06:16I'm curious to see the carrot on top of the kumquat.
06:20That is interesting.
06:22That is very interesting.
06:24You get the citrus, but you have the carrot poking its head out.
06:27Yeah, it's very complex.
06:28And not overpowering.
06:29That's really exciting.
06:32This is a home run.
06:33There's no shortage of metaphors in the flavoring business.
06:37Givaudan goes to the ends of the earth, scouting for new flavors.
06:42In Hong Kong, Givaudan convened their annual conclave of top chefs from restaurants around the world.
06:50Demonstrate their latest creations.
06:53The goal, to turn those creations into new commercial flavors.
06:57The chefs mixed, chopped, mashed, steamed, sautéed, and smoked for a week to create irresistible, cutting-edge cuisine.
07:07Hong Kong chef, Alvin Leung, didn't disappoint.
07:10It makes you want to eat this again and again and again, okay?
07:14It's like sex, okay?
07:16You know, you want to do it over and over again until you get a headache.
07:19The Givaudan team didn't just taste the food.
07:22They sniffed, photographed, analyzed, and debated it.
07:26Then they distilled the best into flavor powders, applied them to beef and noodles, and voila, a frozen dinner.
07:34This is our translation into a frozen-ready meal that you could buy in the supermarket to really deliver a different eating experience.
07:43Givaudan chef Stefan Strayler demonstrated how convincing these translations can be compared to the real thing.
07:51We have here the whole lineup of some of the chicken flavors, so that's a roasted chicken flavor.
07:57It sure is.
08:01It absolutely matches it.
08:03Givaudan makes flavors that match almost every kind of chicken imaginable.
08:09This is crusty, fatty chicken.
08:12We just take a little skin here, and when you smell it that now, you get much more of those fatty, crusty notes.
08:21And when you smell it that flavor...
08:25Yes, sure it is.
08:27Now, what is this?
08:29Is this actually chicken?
08:32It can be, yes.
08:34A lot of what you have in front of you is the chicken that has been translated into a flavor.
08:42Translated on a grand scale in the Givaudan plant in Kentucky.
08:47This is a chicken flavor.
08:49There's a liquid in the tank.
08:51An endless stream of brown liquid, part chicken, part chemical, all flavor.
08:57This is the chicken we looked at in the tank right here.
09:00Oh.
09:02So this is the chicken in the hose.
09:05It's your chicken in the hose.
09:07Chicken in the hose.
09:08Right.
09:08We'll stretch this hose out, and we'll actually load the liquid into these individual trays.
09:13It gets vacuum dried in the oven, and it comes out in a dry cake form.
09:21We'll grind that into a fine powder.
09:24Chicken, just like grandma used to make.
09:28It's used in soups, stews, sausage, noodle, and rice dishes.
09:33Chicken by the ton.
09:35Chicken for every taste.
09:37Our old friend, Krusty Fatty.
09:40Chicken for vegetarians.
09:42Yes, chicken without chickens.
09:45Ground zero for the food and flavor industry is the supermarket.
09:49Givaudan won't reveal which brands contain their flavors, but in this aisle, almost every product
09:56on the shelves has been enhanced artificially or with so-called natural flavors.
10:03And not only that, virtually everything edible in a package, in a jar, in a can, is intensified
10:13with either fat, sugar, or salt, or all three of those little devils.
10:18We're eating fat on fat, on sugar on fat, with flavor.
10:23And much of what we're eating with these flavors, you have to ask yourself, is it really food?
10:29Dr. David Kessler is the former head of the FDA.
10:32He is Dr. No.
10:35He's bent on getting America to kick its bad habits.
10:39We're living in a food carnival.
10:42These flavors are so stimulating.
10:44They hijack our brain.
10:46Kessler believes flavorists are accomplices, the hired guns of the food industry.
10:53They make food super palatable.
10:55What's wrong with that?
10:56Don't we want the richness of good taste?
10:59Of course.
11:00Food has to be pleasurable.
11:02It has to be desirable.
11:05But look around, Morley.
11:07Look around this country.
11:09And what do you see?
11:10Ask the rest of the world how they view Americans, and they will say, we don't want to look like them.
11:17Are you saying that the food industry and the flavoring industry together are trying to make and succeeded in making us addicted?
11:25Did the industry do this deliberately?
11:27No.
11:28It learned what stimulates.
11:31It learned what people want.
11:33There's no question we're trying to create an irresistibility and a memorability.
11:38I think, though, that there's then a leap to get to that leads to overconsumption.
11:46Bob Pellegrino is Givardin's flavor czar as vice president of global strategy and business development.
11:54Your critics say that you provide the means to seduce people into eating too much salt, too much fat, too much sugar, and responsible partly for the obesity of this country.
12:05Our business is to make taste experiences pleasurable ones.
12:11So I don't think that the flavors create an overeating problem.
12:17I think that's a different issue.
12:20But is it a different issue?
12:21Because surely what your clients want, the food industry wants, is to provide the kind of flavor that will make people want more.
12:31I don't think it's creating a desire for moreness, as well as it's a desire for memorability so that people will repeat the purchases of the product and enjoy them.
12:44But given the obesity epidemic, the food industry is beginning to respond to pressure for lessness, if there is such a word, of fat, salt, and sugar.
12:55And that's opening up a whole new business opportunity and another challenge for these alchemists of flavor.
13:03Everyone, everyone, everyone is working on health and wellness.
13:07How can you get a consumable, acceptable product that's better for you?
13:12And the challenge now is how do you make them taste good?
13:15Not enough.
13:15So when you lower the salt, what can we put in that will make it taste like it did without salt?
13:21When you lower the sugar, how can you make it taste sweeter without adding calories?
13:25So it's a whole new world that didn't even exist 10 years ago.
13:29But the consumers are interesting.
13:31As much as they want to be healthy, right, if it's not as sweet, I don't want it.
13:35People are still going for the tried and true heavy on sugar, heavy on salt, heavy on fat.
13:41So I guess the real question is, is obesity going down?
13:44And I guess the answer would be no.
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