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"Artificial Flavor." It appears in the ingredient statement right after the sugar, and most people read it as a warning. Here is the claim: the vanillin in an artificial vanilla flavor and the vanillin in a natural one are the ...

The same 15 parts per million that define one product will get another one written up as a defect. Yogurt's entire identity rides on one small molecule. The same molecule is beer's most infamous defect and bottled water's oldest complaint. ...

The warmth in a cinnamon roll is not heat. It is a pain signal. Your tongue has a receptor called TRPA1, built to detect cold and tissue damage. Cinnamaldehyde activates it directly. Your brain reads the result as warmth because ...

The fortune cookie itself is not Chinese. It descends from tsujiura senbei, a Japanese cracker sold near Kyoto shrines, brought to California by Japanese bakers in the early 1900s and adopted by Chinese restaurants after WWII. In China, most people ...

"Pure Vanilla Extract." Right next to it on the shelf, "Vanilla Flavor," a few cents cheaper. Most people assume it is the same thing in fancier words. It is not, and the difference is written into federal law. An extract ...

The most feared additive in the American pantry is manufactured, in large amounts, by your own body. It is also present in breast milk at higher free levels than in a bowl of ramen. The molecule is glutamate, and it ...