It is truly amazing how controlled and manipulated we are. Sixty Minutes on CBS dedicated a long segment to "The Flavorists" - a multi-billion dollar industry that pumps out literal tankers full of chemical concotions designed to make things "taste better", sell better, and specifically with a delicious but very short finish to cause you to eat and drink more.A recent study showed how marketers get you to drink more, and to drink faster, and truly this is fascinating...
In a paper published this month in PLoS ONE, the team reports that whereas the group with straight glasses nursed their 354 milliliters of lager for about 13 minutes, the group with the same amount of beer served in curved glasses finished in less than 8 minutes, drinking alcohol almost as quickly as the soda-drinkers guzzled their pop. However, the researchers observed no differences between people drinking 177 milliliters of beer out of straight versus fluted glasses.
All to turn very ordinary food as simply the cheapest possible base to modify with fat, sugar and largely artificial and "natural" flavorings to very cheaply make crap taste delicious - all with the goal of massive profit. I even noted that they have developed an artificial flavoring designed to closely mimic the effects of oak aging.
The result: produce cheap, column stilled product that barely falls into the regulatory definition (like 94% "rum"), then add meticulously developed and completely artificial additives to make it taste like a real and authentic, truly aged and pure rum.
Folks, we no longer have real food, and ever fewer real spirits. It's all marketing designed to make what really amounts to artificial food and drink. If you get a chance, please - please - find and watch this revealing segment.
Oh, and before I forget...
The segment also confirms the myth of "natural" flavors (as you have read frequently in this forum. "Natural" flavoring may simply mean finding a component of pig rump (the "natural" part) and then adding a host of completely artificial ingredients to create, say, "natural orange flavor".
The industry has managed to convince us that "natural" means "real as from nature", eg a real orange squeezed to make real orange juice. I have confronted a number of distillers on their use of "natural spices" and asked directly - are you using real and whole spice as grown and harvested from the fields?
That's when the email exchange stops. Don't believe me - make your own e-mail request...
Probably one of the best lagers I have ever had and it had to be over 10% alcohol....done with the aside. I became jaded about brews. Over the years I spent in Europe I hit most countries outside the 'Wall' except for Scandinavia. Eventually residing back in the US and still the same swill. Then in the early 80's a friend told me about a small independent brewery in North/Central California called Sierra Nevada that was making ales. It took me nearly a year before I found a liqueur store that carried it, but stock was small and sporadic. They became quite successful and eventually sold out to the 'big boys'. Nevertheless, a new era in brew had started in the US....the micro-brewery. A throw-back in time to another era except they continued to expand their skills and offerings and the American public was allowed to at least have the opportunity to learn what 'real' brew should taste like. I see this as a possibility for rum and scotch and any other distillates that are being compromised for the bottom line by fancy labels and bottles, high prices that many think equate with quality, slick marketing, and label descriptions that are just platitudes rather than facts and honesty.