Within the context of the safety assessment of “social
chemicals” such as drugs, agrochemicals, major
food additives and environmental chemicals, food
flavors have conventionally been perceived to be of
relatively low priority. The reasons for this are fairly
obvious: many are of natural origin and have been
consumed as components of the diet for innumerable
generations; exposure levels are generally low and,
in the vast majority of cases, self-limiting; most belong
to well-defined chemical classes the structures