Wonderful Benefits of Citral Flavor

by Kamal Chadda writer Citral is a mixture of a pair of terpenoids and is usually found in the oils of various plants like lemon grass, lemon and orange. It has two isomers Citral A which has a strong lemon odor and Citral B which is sweeter. Sometimes, Citral used as flavor, sometimes in perfumery for the odor it possess and also for fortifying lemon oil.

Over centuries, citral has been used to cure various ailments. Anyhow, its efficiency to kill dangerous body cells is a new development. Some researchers in 2005 discovered that the citral in lemon grass is powerful enough to kill dangerous cells without harming the healthy ones. Since then, citral has been used in various countries for treating cancer.

Benefits of Citral

Citral has many benefits. Some of them are listed below.

•    Citral is used in the formulation of many cosmetics and personal care products like after shave lotions, perfumes, moisturizers etc.
•    The antimicrobial qualities of citral make it an effective solution against insects.
•    Citral used as flavor to imitate the flavors of lemon, grapefruit, orange and lime.
•    It helps in combating with depression and mood swings.

Health benefits of Citral

As mentioned earlier, citral has many health benefits. Citral from lemon grass has the power to fight the cancer cells in the body. It is hence used in oncology. It also helps women in relieving the pain during menstruation.It lowers the high body temperature during fevers and relaxes the stomach and intestinal muscles in case of stomach aches.

Why Flavoring is Added to Foods?

Flavoring is added to foods and beverages mainly for two reasons. One is to give them an intrinsic flavor. The second reason is to give flavor which they lose during processing. Food flavorings are also used in certain oral pharmaceutical drugs to help ingestion. A flavorist combines various flavoring agents in order to give a product the desired flavor. The substances that give the intended flavor are identified and the flavorist creates a flavoring that complies with the natural one. The foods are tested to find whether they are edible and once the test it passed; it will be launched in the market.

How Citral Serves as a Food Flavoring?

Flavoring substances are those chemicals which possess flavoring properties. There are over 10,000 flavoring substances that have been identified in nature and flavoring industries use around 2,500 of these in various products. Citral is one of the major flavoring substances in the industry. Citral used as flavor has a taste similar to lemon.

There are nature-identical as well as artificial flavorings where the former has the same chemical formula as the natural model. Citral is one of the natural-identical substances available. To use it as a flavoring substance, a Citral Supplier extracts it from the plants where they are found. Usually citral is extracted from lemon grass oil. It is then distilled to obtain the desired flavoring substance.

Cital supplier carefully extracts the citral from lemon grass, packs it and sends it to the manufacturing companies. Though citral is used widely in beverages and foods, studies suggest that it degrades over time under acidic conditions and the chances to lose the desired flavor are quite high. It might in turn result in the formation of undesired off flavors. However, the degradation of citral in beverages can be minimized by storing them in low temperatures.

About Author

Kamal Chadda is an experienced journalist, editor and leading writer. He regularly writes about chemicals used in flavor and fragrance related topics such as Citral used as a flavor and flavor Aroma Chemicals in India.

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Created on Dec 31st 1969 18:00. Viewed 0 times.

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