The author of "Why the Fries Taste Good" by Eric Schlosser appeared in his best selling book Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Schlosser explains how almost all processed foods have artificial or natural flavors. Since the flavor market makes $1.4 billion a year it is just getting bigger with more foods out every year. So with this comes the obesity problem with producers of food wanting us to eat more, doctors wanting us to eat healthy, and we are stuck in the middle between delicious food and a fat butt.
             For years McDonald's was cooking its fries in a 7 percent cottonseed oil and 93 percent beef tallow. This gave the fries there flavor, but in the 1990's McDonald's switched to vegetable oil. This lead to the problem of how to make the fries taste like they were in the same pan as a burger, so McDonald's started to use natural flavoring. If you look in your kitchen today you will see food product made with natural and artificial flavoring.
             Schlosser was invited to the IFF plant in New Jersey which is the worlds largest flavor company. At this plant they are responsible for potato chips, soft drinks, mouthwash, ice cream, pet foods, and even the smell of perfumes. Since smell plays a huge role in the taste of the product particular attention is paid to this area of smell production. Along with smell the color and texture of food can have a psychological inpack on what you eat.
             Since processed foods became more common and have almost no taste, the flavor industry emerged. The food industry turned to the perfume industry that has had experience working with chemicals. By the 1950's gas chromatographs and mass spectrometers machines that can detect gases increasing the number of flavors. The machines do nothing to simplify the number of chemicals in one flavor.
             Since food flavors are GRAS (Generally Regarded As Safe) this allows the flavor industry to keep th
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