It’s the final countdown. Only two more days until my personal favorite holiday.

But Thanksgiving is not my favorite just because I gather with family and we enjoy time together; every holiday has that component. It may sound heartless, but what makes Thanksgiving special is the food.

Come on, admit it: You can’t wait to sit down in front of mashed potatoes with brown gravy, bread stuffing and a healthy piece of turkey breast smothered in cranberry sauce. Personally, just writing that sentence made my mouth water.

But why are these cravings so strong? I know it is a weird thing to ask, but the answer may be more complex than you think.

According to a CBS News interview with psychologist Dr. Daniel Amen, the food industry has been “hijacked” by what he calls the flavorists.

These “flavorists” are chemists who are contracted by food processing companies. Their job is essentially to mix different chemicals to simulate the flavors we know and love.

That’s right, I said simulate. Everything from strawberry jam to beef stock to toothpaste has been chemically altered to taste like natural ingredients, even though natural ingredients are rarely present.

However, flavor chemists are not just simulating natural flavors, they are “improving” upon them, making flavors so good that people just can’t get enough.

In a November 2011 60 Minutes interview with Dawn Streich, an expert flavorist with the company Givaudan, Streich said, “…we want a burst in the beginning. And maybe a finish that doesn’t linger too much so that you want more of it.”

Correspondent Morley Safer said that practice suggests something else: addiction.

Flavorist Jim Hassel responded with, “That’s a good word.”

Addiction. This is why so many foods make our mouth water and may explain the increasing numbers of obese Americans.

“What is the big deal?” you might ask. Who cares as long as I get my turkey dinner. Well, most of the chemicals, apart from being mainly comprised of sugar and fat, will also make you cringe when you hear where they come from.

In fact, some vanilla and strawberry flavors are extracted from a gland in a beaver’s backside.

And just about everything on supermarket shelves besides fresh produce has been altered by the work of the flavorists.

I know, this is hard to hear. It’s even hard to write. As a fan of deep-fried and sugar-filled foods myself, learning that even “healthy” foods might not even be healthy is a hard realization.

However, at Thanksgiving, a time when food is celebrated, it is especially important to know what you are eating because you might just be addicted.

And be careful, because if the saying “you are what you eat” is true, you just might be a chemical extracted from a beaver’s backside.