viable quantities from natural materials levels of citral degradation are directly correlated with temperature and time as governed by chemical kinetics specifically high levels of decomposition are typically associated with high temperatures and long periods of time by convention the food and beverage industries typically use accelerated aging studies to test the relative stability of various product formulations in such tests high temperatures e g 30 80 u00b0 c are used to accelerate decomposition reactions so that the stabilities of test formulations can be compared over a relatively short period of time measured by hours or days results of such tests are often used to predict relative stabilities of products at lower temperatures 20 30 u00b0 c over longer periods of time months or years in the present invention accelerated aging tests have been used to compare the stability of citrus flavored compositions with and without a stabilizing agent example 2 several important results are evident first as shown in fig2 the presence of a plant extract significantly increases the rate of formation of p cymen 8 ol second and most importantly citrus flavored compositions containing a plant extract produce substantially less p methylacetophenone in accelerated aging tests than compositions which contain no added plant extract fig3 the effect of adding plant extract is evident within the first few days and becomes increasingly more pronounced over time this effect is particularly significant when viewed in terms of the taste threshold for p methylacetophenone shown as the horizontal broken line in fig3 which is relatively low as shown in fig3 citrus flavored compositions containing 25 ppm of a.