On the important French Fry Question

[jf noonan]

On Mon, 22 Jan 2001, Joanna Sheldon wrote:
> 
> "A typical artificial strawberry flavor, like the kind found
> in a Burger King strawberry milk shake, contains the
> following ingredients: amyl acetate, amyl butyrate, amyl
> valerate, anethol, anisyl formate, benzyl acetate, benzyl
> isobutyrate, butyric acid, cinnamyl isobutyrate, cinnamyl
> valerate, cognac essential oil, diacetyl, dipropyl ketone,
> ethyl acetate, ethyl amyl ketone, ethyl butyrate, ethyl
> cinnamate, ethyl heptanoate, ethyl heptylate, ethyl lactate,
> ethyl methylphenylglycidate, ethyl nitrate, ethyl
> propionate, ethyl valerate, heliotropin,
> hydroxyphenyl-2-butanone (10 percent solution in alcohol),
> a-ionone, isobutyl anthranilate, isobutyl butyrate, lemon
> essential oil, maltol, 4-methylacetophenone, methyl
> anthranilate, methyl benzoate, methyl cinnamate, methyl
> heptine carbonate, methyl naphthyl ketone, methyl
> salicylate, mint essential oil, neroli essential oil,
> nerolin, neryl isobutyrate, orris butter, phenethyl alcohol,
> rose, rum ether, g-undecalactone, vanillin, and solvent."

Right, most of those things are probably in strawberries too,
hence the strawberry smell.


> And all I want is a strawberry that tastes like a strawberry. 

A strawberry without the organic chemicals, eh?

It's called water.  You take all the scarey sounding substances
(hundreds, if not thousands of them) out of strawberries and you
have water (dihydrogen monoxide).


> Something our grandparents would have taken for granted but
> which is almost impossible to find anymore.
> 
> It occurs to me to wonder why we're surprised the cancer
> rates are so high.

Yeah, we live long enough to get cancer now.  Cancer is an older
person's disease with incidence very low in children (e.g. there
are only about 1500 cases of lymphoma in children per year in
the entire US), and building steadily the older one gets.

--

Joseph Noonan
Houston, TX
jfn1 at msc.com

"An average scrapple loaf contains the rectums of 4 swine."