They don’t make fruit, vegetables like they used to

ISUPPOSE sales of toilet spray are doing very well in Cape Town these days as residents cut back on their flushing rate. If you can’t drown the pong you try to gas it. Shops are probably doing a roaring trade in personal deodorants too as hard working sweaty Capetonians cut back on their bathing habits.

I had released a small cloud of spray in my loo the other day and subconsciously registered “apple” as the spray settled. It’s quite a popular aroma, that fake apple smell. We find it in shampoo, hand wash, dish-washing liquid and in loo spray.

But we don’t find it in apples. That’s the strange thing. Apples don’t actually smell like that. Only apple perfume smells like that.

I am told there’s a huge industry creating artificial aromas and flavours. Well, mostly aromas, because we can only distinguish five basic flavours –sweet, sour, bitter, salt and umami (that’s another column).

Everything else we describe as “taste” is actually aroma. Scientists have worked out that substances called esters are what trigger our scent responses.

There are some basic esters that remind us of apple, banana, orange, lemon and so on. They can be created artificially in a laboratory.

In fact, the flavour of an apple is far more subtle than that, but a whiff of that basic ester instantly signals “apple” to our brain. Or orange or banana. The manufacture of artificial esters is a vast industry. We would probably be shocked if we knew how any of our daily foods are boosted by a few drops of the correct ester.

Apple juice can be made to taste far more “appley”. That banana milkshake can be made to taste far more like bananas than real bananas do.

The trouble is that after tasting a banana milkshake that has been enhanced by that banana ester, a real banana seems almost tasteless in comparison.

How often have you heard your friends say: “These modern apples don’t taste nearly as good as the apples we used to get when we were kids.”

Well, of course they don’t. The flavour has been supercharged by added esters.

The sneaky part comes into play with the prepared baby foods. Not many modern mothers have the time to prepare baby foods from scratch, so they buy puréed foods in little jars. All flavour enhanced, of course. Naturally babies grow up loving those puréed apple sauces, mashed pumpkin, stewed guavas and so on.

When those babies grow up and have to buy their own food they remember those flavour enhanced jars and wonder why apples no longer taste as good as they remember, or bananas, or guavas.

And they become like me – grumpy old farts muttering, “they don’t make bananas like they used to do”. So they buy enhanced banana puddings instead of the real thing.

And guess who makes enhanced banana puddings.

Last Laugh

An arrogant young graduate went to an employment agency and said: “I have a social science degree and I want a job where I can start at the top.”

The interviewer thought for a moment and then said: “Have you considered grave digging?”