*To keep the flavor principles in solution.
*Add taste to foods. Tasting and smelling food trigger salivary glands and digestive "juices". Without them, stomachs wouldn't be ready for food, and people would have trouble digesting food and making use of the nutrients getting from food.
*Provide a carrier for the color, if any.
*A strength regulator, the greater the amount of solvent the weaker the flavor.
*Flavor plays an important role in consumers’ satisfaction, and it can influence their choice at the moment of purchase and modify the degree of pleasure they experience when consuming these products.
*It gives the flavor a physical fixation.
*It inhibits chemical reactions from occurring.
*It can act as a preservative. (i.e. Ethyl Alcohol, Propylene glycol)
*It is the vehicle for the presentation of the flavor portion.
*It determines the form of the flavor. The flavor materials do not make a flavor work but the form of the flavor that does. The solvent distributes the flavor uniformly throughout the product.
Natural flavor or synthetic flavors are often added to food to increase its acceptability.Role of added flavors has gained importance with advancement in technology being used in food industry and development of new products such as bakery and confectionery items, ready to eat foods, beverage ad fast food items.
What are
the roles of flavor in food?