More than 1000 volatile synthetic flavor compounds are GRAS food additives. Comprehensive toxicological testing to assure their safety would be prohibitive in cost. Instead, their number might be logically reduced to a few dozen by applying these criteria: (1) Measurement of normal odor detection threshold, to eliminate weakly odorous compounds. (2) Assessment with specifically odor blind persons, to delete compounds having very similar odors. As an example, 12 lower fatty acids on the permitted list range over 2700-fold in their thresholds, yet they belong to the same sweat-like primary odor. Hence they could be replaced by just one among their number, isovaleric acid, which has the strongest and sweatiest odor. Analogous reasoning is applied to three new primary odors: the spermous odor of 1-pyrroline, the fishy odor of trimethylamine, and the malty odor of isobutyraldehyde. In each case the number and quantity of flavor additives required in food could be substantially reduced by using the more effcient primary odors. This should result in improved safety for the consumer.