You Can't Fake the Funk

I just tried a bowl of Total Blueberry Pomegranate cereal. It tasted of neither.

There’s a growing trend in the flavor engineering field: Combine two or more fruits when describing the flavor, then use that to mask that your flavor matches no natural profile at all. Gone are the days when you simply knew things tasted fake. Now things taste weird, but you can mentally excuse that weirdness because it’s a flavor combination you’ve never tried before.

Probably the most common example is “strawberry kiwi.” If you’ve had a strawberry kiwi flavored drink, snack, whatever then you know that it tastes like the traditional fake strawberry only slightly off. If you’ve had fresh kiwi then you know that it doesn’t taste like the difference between regular fake strawberry and strawberry kiwi.

So, why is the fake junk industry doing this to us? Well, for one, we’re stupid and we buy this knowing it will taste like bullshit. We’ll ignore that for now. I suspect that the more important factors are either that it’s cheaper to make the incorrect flavor combination or it’s because the marketing for these combinations often implies that they are better than single flavor items.

Why would it be cheaper? Well, if you can spend a little marketing money taking a half developed fake flavor and telling someone that it’s really a combination of two, then you just saved half your development cost. Simple enough so far. It’s also likely that these flavors are developed using cheaper ingredients to keep costs low. Whatever the reason, I have a hard time believing that these companies are spending more money on these crappy, half-assed flavor combinations than they would on a decent singular flavor. Obviously it’s cheaper to create this crap in a lab than it is to, say, put real fruit in the mix.

It’s also marketed as premium. Maybe it’s a fly-by-night flavor that will disappear in a month to make way for the next totally new fantastic combination. Or, it’s the more-is-better-American-way. Perhaps it’s a combination that involves a premium fruit. It’s clear that manufacturers want us to believe that these are better.

Of course, they aren’t. They pretty much all suck. These combinations are often pretty decent when you get them from a better source. POM makes some palatable flavor combinations in their tea. POM tea in general is a little complex, but at least the flavors are somewhat realistic, if not always totally natural. Natural combinations are normally fairly decent.

When you’re in the cereal aisle or you’re buying from a major manufacturer you’re better to stick with the simple flavors. Better yet, go get some fresh fruit to go with your cereal. As for me, tomorrow I’m going back to plain shredded wheat for dessert.