What's With Artificial Cherry Flavor, Anyway?

Whether you love or hate cherry-flavored candies and sodas, we can all agree on one thing: none of this stuff tastes like the actual fruit known as cherries. In fact, if our brains weren't already trained to recognize it as "cherry," we'd probably eat a red Starburst and think, yep, that's "red" flavor, all right.

But why? Why has real cherry flavor evaded us all this time? We already know it's possible to form decent approximations of other fruits: Lemon candy, for example, has the same citrus zing as real lemons, and even an uncanny scent. So there's no reason we can't scrap cherry flavoring and rebuild it from scratch as something more accurate.... right? In the above video, we talk to experts to find our answers. And for the full investigation, head here.