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Deep in the heart of the exotic forests of
Madagascar live an exotic people who grow

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an exotic bean, and this exotic bean has an
exotic flavor with an exotic name.

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They call it…

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“Vanilla.”

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Wait, wait, wait… vanilla?

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Vanilla’s not exotic at all—it’s in
everything from ice cream to pastries to shampoo

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to vapes!

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I mean, it’s literally synonymous with bland
and boring… right?

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But, surprise twist of narrative perspective!

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Vanilla’s not actually as common as you’d
think—in fact, it’s actually still the

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second-most expensive spice in the world.

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The reason that vanilla became such a widespread
flavor actually has to do with how easy it

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is to mimic.

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Vanilla was one of the first artificial flavors
ever created, and to this day, an estimated

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90% to 97% of all vanilla-flavored things
don’t have any real vanilla at all.

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Now, this might come as kind of a surprise,
because vanilla-flavored things actually taste

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like vanilla, and we expect artificial flavors
to taste like a godless affront to Mother

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Nature.

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So, what makes vanilla so easy to fake, and
what is it about other artificial flavors

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that tastes so… artificial?

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Well in order to explain what tastes wrong
about artificial flavors, we need to talk

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about what a flavor actually is.

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You see, there are actually only five tastes
your tongue can detect, so when you’re thinking

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of distinct flavors—like the difference
between a blue slushie and a red slushie—you’re

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actually thinking of aromas.

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Flavors are really just a combination of chemicals
that you smell while consuming a food.

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Your other senses kind of come into play as
well, but I don’t really have time to get

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into all of that, so I’m just going to cram
all of those irrelevant fun facts into the

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next two seconds.

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Got it?

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Good.

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Now that we’re on the same page, let’s
get into why artificial flavors taste so wrong.

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Much like a baby, there are two main ways
an artificial flavor can be conceived: on

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purpose or by accident.

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Some of the most iconic wrong-tasting tastes
were discovered when someone decided that

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a new chemical just kind of reminded them
of a real flavor.

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For example, methyl anthranilate—better
known as artificial grape, or, more accurately,

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vaguely purple flavor—didn’t actually
come from grapes.

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Chemists had been pulling it from a slightly
less popular snack—industrial coal tar—and

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using it as grape flavoring for decades before
anyone discovered that it could actually be

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found, in trace amounts, in real grapes.

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An even weirder example would be isoamyl acetate,
which my American viewers would recognize

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as artificial banana, but my English viewers
might recognize as artificial pear… or whatever

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it is that they call pears over there.

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And that’s because, sorry to break it to
you, but isoamyl acetate is just a vaguely

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fruity flavor—since Jargonelle pears were
all the rage in England when the chemical

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was first discovered, they decided to market
it as pear.

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But over in the US, where those pears weren’t
as popular, they told people it tasted like

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banana instead—and since most 19th century
Americans had no idea what bananas tasted

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like, everyone was just like, “oh yeah,
totally, this is definitely what bananas taste

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like.”

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And just as a side note, bananas did actually
taste more like their Laffy Taffy counterparts

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until the 1950s when they were all killed
off and replaced by backup bananas, but we

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have a whole other video about that if you’re
just here for banana facts.

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Anyway… for a long time, this was basically
how all flavors were created; chemists would

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be synthesizing some new poison to kill a
Sultan with, notice that their lab smelled

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vaguely like apples, and bottle up whatever
was oozing from their machines for children

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to enjoy around the world.

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Obviously, it makes sense why a lot of these
early artificial flavors—some of which we

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still use today—don’t taste quite right:
it’s because they… aren’t right.

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But we don’t live in the 1800s anymore;
we have penicillin, rocket ships, and we can

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even make things taste like apples on purpose.

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In fact, we know exactly which 300 or so chemicals
make up the composition of an apple, so why

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is it that green Jolly Ranchers still taste
like someone candied a rod of uranium?

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Well, it’s because translating that list
of chemicals to a candy flavor is more complicated

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than you’d think.

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This job is left up to people called “flavorists,”
and it’s so tricky that there are only about

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500 of them in the world.

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Basically, what they do is they take a real
food like a strawberry, and mush it up—seems

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easy so far, but there’s actually more to
it than that.

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They then have to sort through the hundreds
of different chemicals that end up in the

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air, and figure out which ones they need to
recreate the food’s flavor.

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In some cases, all you need is a single chemical—this
is why vanilla is so easy to synthesize; it

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gets its flavor almost entirely from just
one compound called “vanillin.”

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Most flavors, though, aren’t so simple—getting
a decently accurate strawberry flavor requires

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20 or 30 different chemicals, and that’s
only a small sample of what you’d find in

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the real deal.

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To make matters more complicated, identifying
what chemicals contribute to a flavor isn’t

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exactly intuitive; chemists couldn’t crack
artificial raspberry until they tried adding

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a substance that smelled like cat urine, which
was also a godsend for the chemists trying

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to crack artificial cat urine.

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But before anyone decides swear off artificial
flavors because they’re scared of guzzling

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cat urine, I should clarify that they’re
technically no different than so-called natural

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flavors, which are also made by mashing chemicals
together in a lab—it’s just that instead

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of being sourced from petroleum or wood pulp,
they’re sourced from something that’s

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slightly more edible.

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But at the end of the day, these natural and
artificial flavors are just the real flavors

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with a few chemicals missing.

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They’re like… low-resolution flavors.

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Artificial strawberry is just strawberry with
bad graphics.

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Could we make it more accurate?

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Sure.

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Is it possible to make a grape flavor that
has anything to do with grapes?

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Most definitely.

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But let’s be honest: there’s just something
special about the sweet, sweet taste of that

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industrial coal tar.

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But you know what also tastes good?

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The flavor of finally finding a habit that
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is fun to keep up, and is easy to maintain…
or something.

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Some say it’s roughly like bananas, but
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