This may seem almost sacrilegious to some, but even though I'm a little bit of a coffee snob (whole high quality beans, ground at home), I've never found coffee that isn't improved with just a hint of vanilla. And I mean a hint.
And here's something I'm sure will stick in the craw of natural food fans. Some natural flavors are complex mixes of things that are virtually impossible to replicate. Strawberry. Even grape, especially as wine (although after 40 years sober, I kind of forget what wine tastes like). Grapefruit. Savory flavors... actually most food flavors. There are no simple molecules that taste like these foods. But some flavors are actually pretty simple, single molecules. And, expensive natural vanilla buffs will never agree, but the essence of vanilla, vanillin, is easily manufactured and works perfectly well. Maple essence is similar. Of course the natural foods are more complex, but these flavors are simple and easy to synthesize, so I use them without being abashed.
The great prophet of disruption, Tony Seba, says that the genetic science of directed fermentation is about to make it much easier to manufacture just about any organic molecule, including proteins and starches, so, in particular, the vast energy and resource intensive industry of livestock (including fish farming and dairy) is about to be replaced by artificially produced casein and whey proteins and many other things, to make essentially artificially induced food, made for us by genetically modified yeast. Even plant based foodstuffs could, in theory, be produced by yeast cheaper and with almost no land dedicated to the processes. He was right about the smartphone, correctly predicting the actual year (several years in advance) the product would break through. But here, I'm pretty sure, he's just wrong. Human relationships with food are really, really subtle, and these simple flavor molecules are the exception, not the rule. I will be very, very surprised indeed if Seba is right about this.
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