Diners who frequent higher end restaurants may have no problem accepting a chef's use of unusual or artificial flavoring agents when they are used to bring out unusual sensations in the food, like the menthol crystals used by Wylie Dufresne in some dishes at wd-50. The same cannot be said when artificial flavorings are used instead of readily available ingredients.

Leading French chefs Joel Robuchon and Alain Passard have denounced the growing trend among French cooks for using non-natural ingredients in their cooking, like saffron perfume, truffle essence or powdered wine sauce. The objective, unlike the use of similar things in the conceptual molecular gastronomy model, is to be able to achieve cheap, quick results. French cooks who use them use the "ingredients" secretly, for fear of being accused of cheating by others in their profession. A supplier stands by the products, saying "An increased range [of flavors] should logically be tolerated and accepted by everyone in the end," while Passard said "I don't know what to call the people who use these chemicals, but they are not cooks."

Contrary to an assertion by one of the vendors for these products, the use of wild mushroom or truffle flavor is not the same as vanilla because vanilla is used exclusively as a flavor, not as an ingredient. And though flavorings such as almond extract are common, they are primarily used in places where the real ingredient cannot be, unlike a powdered wine sauce that could clearly be substituted with real wine sauce.

Most diners would agree with Passard. They want real ingredients in their food, not to end up with a faux traditional meal that could have been turned out by the staff of a McDonalds because no real cooking was involved. This is especially true if the restaurants and chefs in question try to pass off their creations as containing the real products their flavorings are modeled after.