Edible flavors are mainly:

1, natural flavors.

It is through physical methods, from nature's plants and animals (spices) in the extraction of completely natural substances, can be obtained from the carrier of natural flavor substances are fruits, animal organs, leaves, tea and seeds. There are more than 5000 kinds of raw materials that can be extracted from edible flavors all over the world, and there are more than 1500 kinds of commonly used ones.

2, equivalent to natural flavors.

These flavors are obtained by chemical treatment of natural raw materials or synthetic and natural flavor substances are identical to the chemical substances.

3, synthetic flavor.

It is the use of synthetic and other chemical methods to obtain the chemical molecules have not been proven to have the substance in nature. If found in nature and dominate the same chemical molecules, it is equivalent to natural flavor.

4, microbial methods of preparation of the flavor.

It is the flavor obtained by microbial fermentation or enzymatic reaction.

5, reactive flavors.

This kind of flavor is the protein and reducing sugar heating Melad reaction and get, often wind in meat, chocolate, coffee, malt flavor.

The role of edible flavors is to produce, change, maintain or enhance the flavor of food. Edible flavor is a very common food additives, commonly used in the production of soft drinks, ice cream, fruit juice, candy, pastries and western food. It is capable of emitting aromatic flavors at room temperature.

People's Daily Online - Why add flavor to food

Baidu Encyclopedia - Edible Flavors