The Reality of Candy
I just finished trying an interesting snack, I took a look at the package and it said contains real and artificial ingredients. Now I’ve talked about this about 100 times on Candy Critic, for the most part I don’t mind the idea of artificial flavors in candy. In fact I’m a big fan of some of the artificial flavors out in the world. I’m able to make the distinction in my mind that when a package says cherry flavored it might not really taste like cherries.
The part that gets me thought is those treats that say they have both. It confuses me completely, why not pick one and go with it. I figure it’s one of several possibilities:
1) They use real flavors and artificial flavors combined to make this flavor. I can see this in the case of a fruit punch because of the mix.
2) In the case where you have more than one flavor of treat, like Skittles. Some real flavors may not be powerful enough to compete with each other so an artificial flavor can boost it up.
3) People in the candy business might be mental; they may dilute the real flavor with an artificial flavor to save a few bucks.
In the case of number 3 I say this because if you’re going to put that both types of flavors are going to be used you might as well just go cheap all the way.
I wish I knew more about this, if you do please comment here or write me an e-mail explaining why.
Chris Stewart
Candy Critic
www.candycritic.org


April 8th, 2006 at 1:56 pm
Hi Chris,
I’m not entirely sure either, but I have a theory. Most flavors are not from just one chemical, the perception of a single flavor (apple, cherry, tomato…) is really a combination of many chemicals. Although it is common for one chemical to dominate the flavor profile if tasted alone something would taste “off” or “missing”. So, when natural and artificial flavors are used in combination for a single candy I would guess that they use the natural to get all the different chemicals, and the artificial to boost the main flavor component. This is just a guess, but it’s a chemically well-informed one!