Scientists at Reading Scientific Services (RSSL) food laboratory are getting sniffy about the work they do for food manufacturers in analysing what gives food its particular flavour. They are literally sniffing the flavour compounds in foods as they are being chemically analysed in order to speed up the process of finding which compounds matter to the flavour and which ones don't. Gas chromatography (GC) is widely used to separate out and measure the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that give food and drinks their flavour, says RSSL. But food companies can then spend a lot of time and money using human sensory panels to identify which of the VOCs in a GC analysis are important to a particular flavour. So RSSL has been using an 'odour port' to sniff the VOCs as they are being analysed. This enables scientists to quickly zone in on the ones that appear to contribute most to a food's flavour.
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