Natural Flavors

Natural Flavors

Natural Flavors

What is it:

Manufacturers use natural flavors as an easy way to cover up or add flavor to a food so it is more desirable to eat, without having to disclose the actual ingredients used. The definition from the FDA states that: “The term natural flavor or natural flavoring means the essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis, which contains the flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof, whose significant function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional.”

Rating:

We avoid natural flavors. There are over 2,500 chemically defined flavor substances in the U.S. and all of them can be lumped under “natural flavor” which means that natural flavors can come with harmful side effects and allergens. Just because something comes from a natural source, doesn’t mean the way it’s processed / extracted is safe – which usually uses potentially toxic compounds that end up in the final product. Natural flavors are not really regulated and therefore can be manipulated by manufacturers, and are currently the fourth most common ingredient on food labels. Today even MSG can be hidden under Natural Flavors. We believe companies and the manufacturers they use should be more transparent about what they are putting in their foods.

Resources:

  1. Review discussing the difficulties of safety evaluations of flavoring additives and how the processes that flavors undergo during metabolism could result in toxic compounds.
  2. Natural flavors as the fourth most common ingredient on food labels (review)

How we rate ingredients

Health is like a bank account, certain ingredients make a deposit into your health bank, meaning they add to
your health. Certain ingredients withdraw from your health bank. We want health promoting ingredients in our diet. To keep things simple, we rate ingredients on a green, yellow, red scale:

Clean

It is naturally occurring in food and has no harmful effects on the body. It is real food. It is health promoting.

Caution

It goes into one or more of the below categories

We Avoid

It is known to have a harmful effect on the body (ex. All food colorings, Natural Flavors, MSG, Potassium bromate, aspartame, artificial flavors)

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