What You Don’t Know About Flavor Enhancers Can Harm You

See Dr. Natasha Campbell-
McBride and Me Speak
in November

Do You Want to Eat Foods With “Flavors” Created by a Biotech Company?

Biotech firm Senomyx is at the forefront of the flavor enhancer market. As they state on their Web site:

“Using isolated human taste receptors, we created proprietary taste receptor-based assay systems that provide a biochemical or electronic readout when a flavor ingredient interacts with the receptor. To enable faster discovery of new flavors, we integrated our assays into a robot-controlled automated system that uses plates containing an array of individual fluid wells, each of which can screen a different sample from our libraries of approximately 800,000 artificial and natural candidate ingredients isolated from plants and other sources.

Our high-throughput discovery and development process allows us to conduct millions of analyses of new potential flavor ingredients annually. This efficiency is impossible to achieve using conventional flavor discovery methods. As a result, we have identified hundreds of unique potential new flavor ingredients that could not be discovered using taste tests alone.”

Their products, which are intended to provide enhancements to savory, sweet, and salty flavors, as well as block bitter flavors and provide cooling taste sensations, are being marketed as a way to help companies “improve the nutritional profile of their products and/or achieve a competitive advantage maintaining or enhancing taste.”

The idea is that a food company can use a Senomyx chemical to enhance the sweetness of sugar or savory flavors, allowing them to boast “reduced sugar” or “no MSG,” giving the illusion that the product is healthier. In reality, it will contain a little-tested chemical that is NOT listed on the label.

Amazingly, these flavor-altering compounds are used in small amounts (less than one part per million), which means companies like Senomyx do not have to go through the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval process typically necessary to release food additives. Instead of the lengthy FDA process, the compound only has to be classified as “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) by the Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association —  a process that can take as little as 18 months, with a mere 3 months of safety testing on rats.

As the New York Times wrote:

“Unlike artificial sweeteners, Senomyx’s chemical compounds will not be listed separately on ingredient labels. Instead, they will be lumped into a broad category — “artificial flavors” — already found on most packaged food labels.”

Many food companies have already partnered with Senomyx, so if you think this is a product you won’t come across, think again. Among the food companies working with Senomyx are:

• PepsiCo
• Nestlé
• Kraft Foods
• Firmenich (a Swiss perfume and flavoring company)
• Ajinomoto Group (makers of meat glue and aspartame)

Embryonic Kidney Cells from Aborted Baby Used to Create Tastier Junk Foods

Senomyx boasts that they have “discovered or in-licensed many of the key receptors that mediate taste in humans.” But what they don’t state so plainly is that they used human embryonic kidney cells (HEK 293) taken from an electively aborted fetus in their product testing.

When this news leaked, Campbell soup responded to an outraged public by severing all ties with Senomyx. However, PepsiCo has maintained their relationship with the company, saying the collaboration is necessary for creating low-calorie, tasty products for their consumers.

Really?

Must they really use human fetal cells just to make tastier junk foods?

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