Natural Food Flavors and Colorants product reviews

Natural Food Flavors and Colorants covers many of the common (and not so common) food flavours and colours; and is written by one of the experts in the Industry with years of experience behind him.

After many years use of synthetic colours and flavours there has been a growing backlash by the general public against artificial ingredients in foods pushing the NPD departments in many industries to develop products containing natural flavours and colours and this book gives the food technologist and product formulator a great insight into the use of natural foods colours and flavours in formulation development.

Part I - Introduction: covers general information in short readable chapters covering a brief introduction into analytical matters, flavours, colours, various methods of extraction and storage. Nothing is covered in great detail, but does give an essential overview into every aspect discussed by the author. If more detail is needed, one can always read elsewhere; however for the formulator on the go, the information given is concise and to the point and probably more than you really need.

Part II - Individual Flavors and Colors: Each monograph has an introduction to the flavour/colour source, historical usage, and some other interesting asides, and gives enough information to allow the reader to decide if this flavour or colour is useful in this application. The rest of the monograph covers the plant material, chemistry, essential oil (if appropriate) and most importantly the uses.

Some of the chemical identification tests are given - optical rotation, refractive index, specific gravity and solubility. Some of this can be found in monographs of the respective pharmacopoeia; however not all of the flavours discussed can be found in various pharmacopoeia.

Identification numbers, where available have been given. CAS, FEMA and E-numbers are probably the most import in Australia or NZ. US/CFR is also given.

Part III discusses 'Future Needs' which is just a few short chapters covering other spices that may be of use but need more work; also opportunities in natural colours.

For the formulator, the book is laid out in alphabetical order; I would liked to have seen the colours given a separate chapter; however I do concede that some herbs, Saffron for example, is both a flavour and a colour and separate monographs would not be sensible.
There seem to be one or two glaring omissions - betacarotene jumps out; but since a number of sources can be synthetic, it is understandable why this is left out; however considering there are a number of natural sources, betacarotene could have been discussed. I also thought the book covered plant sources exclusively, only to then find a monograph on Cochineal...

All in all, there isn't much to complain about - everything is where you want it and the material discussed is concise and readily available, allowing the formulator to get on with the work at hand and develop those products rapidly.