Abstract

Over the past decade the demand for more natural food additives from consumers has resulted in an increasein the use of natural flavourings. This has now been reflected in changes to European legislation with the recent introductionof regulation EC/1334/2008. This regulation will come into force in January 2011 and contained within this legislation are newdefinitions for natural flavourings and processes that can be used in the preparation of natural flavouring substances. Inparallel to these changes there is increased scrutiny of traditional routes to flavour preparations and a desire to move tocleaner and greener methods to extract natural flavouring preparations and the synthesis of flavour active molecules. Inpart this has been addressed by the use of white biotechnology but alternative green methods can provide new opportunities to produce a wider range of natural flavouring substances using clean technologies.