Flavors Applications

Without flavors, most processed food will taste bland or tasteless. Flavors are added to various drinks and food to make them more desirable for human consumption. Many medications would also be too bitter or revolting if it was not for the addition of such flavors.

Common applications for flavors include:
There are thousands of different favors currently being applied in the food industry. Some are natural like the following:

• Vanilla extract - vanilla is one of the most used flavors in food formulation. Its molecule is hydrophobic and can easily be concentrated onto Purolite adsorbent resins. Alcohol is typically used to extract the pure vanillin molecule from the resin.

• Capsaicin - this spicy extract is growing in use within the food industry. It is also hydrophobic and can be removed via adsorption onto a Purolite adsorbent.
• Quinine - the bitter taste of this molecule is usually found in tonic water and other carbonated drinks. It is also added to other beverages like beer or to enhance the desired bitterness in certain foods.

Other flavors could be synthetic since it takes too many natural products to produce such extract. For example, citric acid could be more economical to produce synthetically than through natural fruit extraction due to the great demand for such organic acid. Citric acid can be isolated via the use of Purolite weak anion exchangers.