This video touches on the subject of calamus. Is there any safe alternative I can use? Specifically, I would like to try the Boker's Bitters recipe from your book. I've already asked this question under your video about safrole. Any response, including "Yes, wait until I will make a video on it in the future." or "I don't know, stop asking." would be appreciated. :) Thank you for the great videos you are making.
Currently, there is no single substitute or replacement. Someone with flavour development skills could probably formulate an approximation with other compounds, but no one has at this point.
I hate to correct you Darcy S. O’Neil, but you are not entirely correct. Yes the FDA, JECFA, WHO, FAO, tell you which compounds are GENERALLY permitted in food, however that is not the entire story. In order for a compound to be used in food, 1. They must be food grade, the purity required is avaiable in the Food Chemical Codex, or the international Organization for Standardization. If the purity standards are not published, then their use has to get special approval from the FDA where by they comply with standards for example heavy metals. 2. They have to be used for a specific purpose I.e. emulsifier, flavoring, gelling agent. Per the FDA 3. They have to be permitted is specific food categories. per the FDA. The Fema GRAS publications and the Codex Alimentarius www.fao.org/gsfaonline/additives/search.html tell you specifically what categories of food the flavoring or other compounds are permitted in. 4. Then once you have confirmed all of the above, and decided what food categories you want to use the substance in, then you have to find out the maximum levels of use permitted in that category. For example FEMA # 2566 2-HEXYL-4-ACETOXYTETRAHYDROFURAN was GRAS by FEMA then taken off the GRAS list, and in the GRAS 25 list it was permitted to be used in only 4 out of 35 food categories. 3 of which state that the average use is .3mg/L with a maximum permitted of 3mg/L and in non alcoholic beverages it is .1mg/L with a 1mg/l permitted maximum. The reason you MUST discern what food categories the flavor is being used in is to make sure you are not exceeding the exposure threshold. For example if we used say decanal, it may will have a higher permitted amount in popcorn than in soft drinks because you don't eat as much popcorn as you drink softdrink so the exposure threshold in popcorn can be much higher than in softdrinks. There are many many compounds that are permitted in one food class but not in others. It would be far better to sort through the FEMA GRAS Publications and write down in an excel sheet all the permitted compounds permitted only in alcoholic and non alcoholic beverages and include their average use and Maximum permitted use for you channel and your viewers, rather than having them look them up. I have spent 15 years in the food flavor and additive regulation and compliance and I still get them confused on occasion and have to look them up. If you wish Darcy, I have the entire FEMS GRAS list specifically for alcoholic and non alcoholic beverages as well as their average use and maximum permitted amounts I can get to you if you contact me. I don't know how to contact you on you tube.
I'm going to have to disagree with you on a bunch of this but you need to make a distinction between government regulations and industry standards. The FEMA documents are all online, including every 2-year update. In fact, I mention it in the video. And the FEMA usage levels are just averages taken from product manufacturers prior to the publication of the first FEMA GRAS documents. It was just a statistical analysis of what was already on the market. If you read the front matter of the early FEMA GRAS documents, they recognize that many ingredients were used at much higher rates than the statistical average, but for GRAS purposes, they removed anything that was 5 times the average and didn't include it in the statistical analysis. The FEMA numbers are average max, not the maximum limit. They do publish recommended maximums now, but they aren't laws. And just because there was data for alcoholic beverages but not non-alcoholic, doesn't mean it can't be used in non-alcoholic beverages. If it is GRAS approved, you don't need to reapply to use it in a new form, only new compounds need to under-go review. The FDA specifically states that it is "only to use the amount necessary to accomplish the desired result" (paraphrased). The FCC (USP) is a private, not-for-profit, company that is run by industry. They make recommendations to the government, but what they publish is not the law. FCC monographs are ridiculously expensive for small companies, but buying FCC material is good. The problem is that out of the 3000 to 4000 ingredients used in food, FCC only has 1600 or so monographs, so they don't even cover half the available ingredients. Anyway, there is a lot of corporate "fear" pumped into the system with corporate rules that don't line up with regulations. The FCC and USP monographs were created so corporations could purchase ingredients from different suppliers with similar production quality. It had little, if anything, to do with safety. Anyway, you look like you spent a lot of time in the corporate world, and corporations do things a certain way for consistency reasons, but the private corporate groups like FEMA don't create the laws. They just provide guidance. If it iis GRAS, you can use it.
And just one more detail, the FEMA documents weren't available to the public (online) until 2016, which made them unavailable to most people developing food or beverages. If these were legal limits, they would have needed to be published, for example on the FDA site, but the FDA only has a GRAS list.
Hey Darcy, um, yes and no, you see prior to the FCC, and FEMA the NAS (national Academy of Science (and the Council of Europe mandated which compounds were permitted in which food catagory their purity, in the 80's the US. The government sold the NAS database to the FCC. This is why in the FDA regulations, you will find the statement on some food additives purity must comply with the FCC monographs. The NAS, along with the CoE had set limits on the amounts of substances permitted in foods, these are backed by the scientific studies often referred to. The US Gov, requested the NAS and later FEMA to do surveys under Nixon, to determine the amount total amounts of additives used to ensure proper tonnage availability per year. A very good person to contact is John Hallagan who is the senior advisor for FEMA, It is a very common misconception that GRAS means safe for all food groups at all levels, John has even written an article discussing this very topic in the GRAS Publications. I love your channel and content you do, I'm also on a parallel to you about softdrinks manufacturing at home, keep up the good work, just be careful about the limits and food categories and purity. Incedently if you know where to look the FCC books are freely avaiable. Also the FEMA lists have been avaiable since the 1970's to the public via the NAS and surveys.
Thanks. I appreciate the comments and the details, I really do. Most of what I'm trying to help people with is that working with flavours is not hard, nor should it be scary. But your first comment throws a lot of industry jargon at people, and it can push them away. In reality, flavour compounds are used at such low rates that it is practically impossible to cause serious harm. Even a 10% contamination of potassium cyanide used at 50 ppm is not enough to harm someone, and no company would ever put something like that on the market. The point is that flavour compounds are a safe way for newcomers to get into the growing field, and it is something anyone can do. I want to be an advocate for people, not a barrier. And trust me, making safety videos on RUclips is not a smart financial decision, but I believe any piece of safety knowledge should be free, to everyone. Now, I get FCC has the monographs for food purity, but for many flavour compounds on the GRAS list, there are no set standards. Fenaroli's Handbook is probably the best source of info for less known flavour compounds, but even then, it doesn't list a specific purity for most compounds, just certain criteria. And I believe the vast majority of reputable flavour manufacturers meet or exceed those specifications. So, given that, I truly feel that with a little guidance and direction to good suppliers plus some math help, anyone can start mixing flavour compounds to create new and interesting flavours or to start a business without violating any laws. Again, this is specific to flavour compounds, not all the other compounds used in food (emulsifiers, packaging, food contact substance, etc.). Flavour compounds are extremely safe and I want people to know that.
Absolutly agree with you that making flavorings easy and accessible for the home maker is very important, this is why I suggested taking the FEMA list sort out all the compounds permitted in alcoholic and non alcoholic beverages, then list the average and (if avaiable the Max amounts) and then clarify which ones are FCC approved. This way the viewer will not exceed safe levels in their beverages and are assured that they are of proper purity. Here is a hint for you, if the compound is not FCC approved, then it was permitted to be used by the incorporation of the EU flavoring data base and should have a purity standard under JECFA. However as the Every thing added to food states, names In this list by Non FDA entities does not mean it is necessarly permitted by the FDA. In which case for a patented substance let's say, the company must submit the intent, the catagory, the limits and the purity with studies in order to get GRAS approval to be used in the desired product. Here is another helpful hint, many FEMA numbers greater than 4000, are GRAS approved by FEMA yes, however they are either patented substances or basically experimental substances that are not yet or have not found a use in the food and flavoring industry. These potential compounds are a lot of smoke and mirrors to dissuade the general public to invent new types of food and drinks requiring expensive trials and studies to get FDA approval to produce a sellable product and to force the general public to hire flavor attorneys to get the product to market. It is not like it once was where the information was readily available up until WWII when corporations began holding and monopolizing the flavor industry. Here is a helpful note for you and your viewers, 90% of the flavor compounds that are used in the flavor industry are between FEMA # 2000 and 3500. And almost every one of these first 1500 compounds are or were FEMA GRAS within their respective food categories, limits and are in the FCC. If you wish to contact me, I can supply you the list for alcoholic and non alcoholic beverages that are FEMA and FCC /FDA statute approved with their respective limits to each category as I am puttering on a global food and flavor database in my spare time and already have this info avaiable if you wish. I am doing this because the industry has made things so damn difficult for the common person to understand and to invent new products. Let me know
Thanks for keeping us and our guests safe
Hey, how do you put extracts into sodas that are non alcoholic?
Best knowledge ever!
Keep posting 😊
This is going to save me so much time going down rabbit holes on Google. You're awesome.
Love your videos, still waiting patiently for your big carbonation video.
wow the legend is back!
Very helpful, thank you (:
This video touches on the subject of calamus. Is there any safe alternative I can use? Specifically, I would like to try the Boker's Bitters recipe from your book. I've already asked this question under your video about safrole. Any response, including "Yes, wait until I will make a video on it in the future." or "I don't know, stop asking." would be appreciated. :)
Thank you for the great videos you are making.
Currently, there is no single substitute or replacement. Someone with flavour development skills could probably formulate an approximation with other compounds, but no one has at this point.
❤ fantastic video
I hate to correct you Darcy S. O’Neil, but you are not entirely correct. Yes the FDA, JECFA, WHO, FAO, tell you which compounds are GENERALLY permitted in food, however that is not the entire story. In order for a compound to be used in food, 1. They must be food grade, the purity required is avaiable in the Food Chemical Codex, or the international Organization for Standardization. If the purity standards are not published, then their use has to get special approval from the FDA where by they comply with standards for example heavy metals.
2. They have to be used for a specific purpose I.e. emulsifier, flavoring, gelling agent. Per the FDA
3. They have to be permitted is specific food categories. per the FDA. The Fema GRAS publications and the Codex Alimentarius www.fao.org/gsfaonline/additives/search.html tell you specifically what categories of food the flavoring or other compounds are permitted in.
4. Then once you have confirmed all of the above, and decided what food categories you want to use the substance in, then you have to find out the maximum levels of use permitted in that category. For example FEMA # 2566 2-HEXYL-4-ACETOXYTETRAHYDROFURAN was GRAS by FEMA then taken off the GRAS list, and in the GRAS 25 list it was permitted to be used in only 4 out of 35 food categories. 3 of which state that the average use is .3mg/L with a maximum permitted of 3mg/L and in non alcoholic beverages it is .1mg/L with a 1mg/l permitted maximum.
The reason you MUST discern what food categories the flavor is being used in is to make sure you are not exceeding the exposure threshold. For example if we used say decanal, it may will have a higher permitted amount in popcorn than in soft drinks because you don't eat as much popcorn as you drink softdrink so the exposure threshold in popcorn can be much higher than in softdrinks.
There are many many compounds that are permitted in one food class but not in others. It would be far better to sort through the FEMA GRAS Publications and write down in an excel sheet all the permitted compounds permitted only in alcoholic and non alcoholic beverages and include their average use and Maximum permitted use for you channel and your viewers, rather than having them look them up. I have spent 15 years in the food flavor and additive regulation and compliance and I still get them confused on occasion and have to look them up.
If you wish Darcy, I have the entire FEMS GRAS list specifically for alcoholic and non alcoholic beverages as well as their average use and maximum permitted amounts I can get to you if you contact me. I don't know how to contact you on you tube.
I'm going to have to disagree with you on a bunch of this but you need to make a distinction between government regulations and industry standards. The FEMA documents are all online, including every 2-year update. In fact, I mention it in the video. And the FEMA usage levels are just averages taken from product manufacturers prior to the publication of the first FEMA GRAS documents. It was just a statistical analysis of what was already on the market.
If you read the front matter of the early FEMA GRAS documents, they recognize that many ingredients were used at much higher rates than the statistical average, but for GRAS purposes, they removed anything that was 5 times the average and didn't include it in the statistical analysis. The FEMA numbers are average max, not the maximum limit. They do publish recommended maximums now, but they aren't laws. And just because there was data for alcoholic beverages but not non-alcoholic, doesn't mean it can't be used in non-alcoholic beverages. If it is GRAS approved, you don't need to reapply to use it in a new form, only new compounds need to under-go review.
The FDA specifically states that it is "only to use the amount necessary to accomplish the desired result" (paraphrased).
The FCC (USP) is a private, not-for-profit, company that is run by industry. They make recommendations to the government, but what they publish is not the law. FCC monographs are ridiculously expensive for small companies, but buying FCC material is good. The problem is that out of the 3000 to 4000 ingredients used in food, FCC only has 1600 or so monographs, so they don't even cover half the available ingredients.
Anyway, there is a lot of corporate "fear" pumped into the system with corporate rules that don't line up with regulations. The FCC and USP monographs were created so corporations could purchase ingredients from different suppliers with similar production quality. It had little, if anything, to do with safety.
Anyway, you look like you spent a lot of time in the corporate world, and corporations do things a certain way for consistency reasons, but the private corporate groups like FEMA don't create the laws. They just provide guidance. If it iis GRAS, you can use it.
And just one more detail, the FEMA documents weren't available to the public (online) until 2016, which made them unavailable to most people developing food or beverages. If these were legal limits, they would have needed to be published, for example on the FDA site, but the FDA only has a GRAS list.
Hey Darcy, um, yes and no, you see prior to the FCC, and FEMA the NAS (national Academy of Science (and the Council of Europe mandated which compounds were permitted in which food catagory their purity, in the 80's the US. The government sold the NAS database to the FCC. This is why in the FDA regulations, you will find the statement on some food additives purity must comply with the FCC monographs.
The NAS, along with the CoE had set limits on the amounts of substances permitted in foods, these are backed by the scientific studies often referred to.
The US Gov, requested the NAS and later FEMA to do surveys under Nixon, to determine the amount total amounts of additives used to ensure proper tonnage availability per year. A very good person to contact is John Hallagan who is the senior advisor for FEMA,
It is a very common misconception that GRAS means safe for all food groups at all levels, John has even written an article discussing this very topic in the GRAS Publications.
I love your channel and content you do, I'm also on a parallel to you about softdrinks manufacturing at home, keep up the good work, just be careful about the limits and food categories and purity. Incedently if you know where to look the FCC books are freely avaiable.
Also the FEMA lists have been avaiable since the 1970's to the public via the NAS and surveys.
Thanks. I appreciate the comments and the details, I really do. Most of what I'm trying to help people with is that working with flavours is not hard, nor should it be scary. But your first comment throws a lot of industry jargon at people, and it can push them away. In reality, flavour compounds are used at such low rates that it is practically impossible to cause serious harm. Even a 10% contamination of potassium cyanide used at 50 ppm is not enough to harm someone, and no company would ever put something like that on the market. The point is that flavour compounds are a safe way for newcomers to get into the growing field, and it is something anyone can do. I want to be an advocate for people, not a barrier. And trust me, making safety videos on RUclips is not a smart financial decision, but I believe any piece of safety knowledge should be free, to everyone.
Now, I get FCC has the monographs for food purity, but for many flavour compounds on the GRAS list, there are no set standards. Fenaroli's Handbook is probably the best source of info for less known flavour compounds, but even then, it doesn't list a specific purity for most compounds, just certain criteria. And I believe the vast majority of reputable flavour manufacturers meet or exceed those specifications.
So, given that, I truly feel that with a little guidance and direction to good suppliers plus some math help, anyone can start mixing flavour compounds to create new and interesting flavours or to start a business without violating any laws. Again, this is specific to flavour compounds, not all the other compounds used in food (emulsifiers, packaging, food contact substance, etc.). Flavour compounds are extremely safe and I want people to know that.
Absolutly agree with you that making flavorings easy and accessible for the home maker is very important, this is why I suggested taking the FEMA list sort out all the compounds permitted in alcoholic and non alcoholic beverages, then list the average and (if avaiable the Max amounts) and then clarify which ones are FCC approved. This way the viewer will not exceed safe levels in their beverages and are assured that they are of proper purity.
Here is a hint for you, if the compound is not FCC approved, then it was permitted to be used by the incorporation of the EU flavoring data base and should have a purity standard under JECFA. However as the Every thing added to food states, names In this list by Non FDA entities does not mean it is necessarly permitted by the FDA. In which case for a patented substance let's say, the company must submit the intent, the catagory, the limits and the purity with studies in order to get GRAS approval to be used in the desired product.
Here is another helpful hint, many FEMA numbers greater than 4000, are GRAS approved by FEMA yes, however they are either patented substances or basically experimental substances that are not yet or have not found a use in the food and flavoring industry. These potential compounds are a lot of smoke and mirrors to dissuade the general public to invent new types of food and drinks requiring expensive trials and studies to get FDA approval to produce a sellable product and to force the general public to hire flavor attorneys to get the product to market. It is not like it once was where the information was readily available up until WWII when corporations began holding and monopolizing the flavor industry.
Here is a helpful note for you and your viewers, 90% of the flavor compounds that are used in the flavor industry are between FEMA # 2000 and 3500. And almost every one of these first 1500 compounds are or were FEMA GRAS within their respective food categories, limits and are in the FCC.
If you wish to contact me, I can supply you the list for alcoholic and non alcoholic beverages that are FEMA and FCC /FDA statute approved with their respective limits to each category as I am puttering on a global food and flavor database in my spare time and already have this info avaiable if you wish. I am doing this because the industry has made things so damn difficult for the common person to understand and to invent new products.
Let me know
Can i get your life experience on my words…?