What Are “Natural Flavors?”

Flavoring

In order to understand natural flavors and what they are we must first take a look at how flavoring works for food in general

All types of foods have flavors. Flavors = specific molecules or chemicals, the two words are interchangeable here, that are present in the food for taste and don't really have any nutritional benefits. These are present in all foods everywhere.

Example: whenever you eat an apple (eat the apple) even freshly pulled off the tree, there are specific chemicals that make an apple taste like an apple. We'll call this apple taste the apple chemical. This apple chemical has a specific molecular structure that can be replicated in 3 major ways:

1. You can get the apple chemical from the apple itself

2. You can get a different chemical from a plant or an animal product, rearrange it in a lab, and create the apple chemical

3. You can synthesize the apple chemical from scratch in a lab using a combination of different chemicals

I want you to notice that in all 3 instances, it would appear that we have the same apple chemical regardless of where it comes from. Keep this in mind because it's important later on

Now it's absolutely essential to understand that in order to get any chemical for flavoring purposes if it doesn't come from the actual thing itself - back to our example if you're trying to get something to taste like an apple, but don't actually use an apple to do it, it takes dozens if not hundreds of chemicals in the right combination replicate this apple taste. This is where the terms natural and artificial flavors come in

By definition, a natural flavor is any flavoring chemical that is derived from a plant or animal product and an artificial flavor is any flavoring chemical that is synthesized from scratch in a lab. Natural flavor does NOT mean that the flavor you're tasting came from the thing its supposed to taste like! Again back to our apple example, if you're eating something that tastes like an apple, but doesn't actually have any apple products in it, there's a very high chance that the "natural" flavors you taste don't actually come from apples themselves. Why is this important?

Natural vs. Artificial Flavors

Back to our definition of Natural vs. Artificial Flavors. Natural = chemicals that are derived from a plant or an animal. Remember what we talked about how most flavors take a combination of dozens if not hundreds of chemicals in the right sequence to get that flavor exactly right? Well within companies, there are people called flavorists, yes flavaists, whose entire job is to play mad scientist and mix chemicals together in order to produce just the right flavor. This is important to understand.. Let's say a company wants to make a certain food taste like an apple without actually using an apple to do so. A flavorist will take thousands of chemicals derived from plants or animals, mix them all up and modify them in whatever way he or she pleases, and then list them in the ingredients under natural flavors. They literally do not have to tell you what these chemicals are and can claim all of them under the umbrella term of natural flavors. So I know what you're thinking and the answer is YES...natural flavors also go to a lab and undergo an extensive alteration process just like artificial flavoring does.

Again, this is so important that I want to repeat myself..

• A company can take chemical X that is derived from a plant. Change it completely into a chemical, chemical Z, and call it a natural flavor because it originally came from a plant even though its original chemical structure is completely altered

• Contrasting this with artificial flavoring, a company can create that same chemical Z using different chemicals from scratch in a lab

• Regardless, the outcome of producing chemical Z is the exact same in both instances

This being said, there is essentially no difference between natural and artificial flavors as they both can create the same chemical in the end, but the means that they do it are just slightly different

Natural flavors have become a marketing ploy for companies because whenever you hear the word natural you automatically assume healthier because it comes from nature when in fact there isn't anything natural about the final product at all

So I know this was a lot, but there is a point to all of this: how do natural flavors and artificial flavors actually effect our health?

Health Effects

Believe it or not, natural flavor is now the 4th most common ingredient in prepared foods behind water, salt and sugar.

There are two major problems with natural flavors:

1. No scientific data has studied the efficacy on natural flavors because as we talked about before, each natural flavor can have hundreds of different chemicals in each product, so it's difficult to standardized and have controlled studies comparing health outcomes for them

2. Flavorists job is to make the best flavor possible. These natural flavors are deliberately contrived by the flavorists to taste amazing and they want you to eat more, crave more, and want more of whatever product you're putting in your body. The problem with natural and/or artificial flavors is the same problem with artificial sweeteners, that is they trick your brain into craving more of the actual flavor because of its potency. This can lead you to eat more than you originally intended

Although natural flavors originally came from a plant or animal, as we talked about before, they undergo an extensive processing component and may contain many chemical additives. I don't know about you, but I'm not a huge fan of regularly consuming chemicals..

All additives since the 1950s are regulated by the FDA including natural and artificial flavors. They must undergo rigorous testing to be labeled with GRAS or Generally Recommended As Safe, but again they don't fully disclose all of the actual chemicals that are sometime being used

So, natural flavors claiming to be healthier is 100% FALSE