What are these "natural flavors"?!
Question:
What are these "natural flavors"?
For example in some products instead of vanilla extract, it says natural vanilla flavor. What does that mean? And instead of peppermint extract it says "natural mint falvor" or in some cases just "natural flavors" without mentioning mint at all. Does anyone know what these specifically are that flavor it?
Answers:
Both "natural flavors" and "artificial flavors" are chemical compounds added - usually in very small amounts - to food products to enhance the taste. Natural flavors are required to include components of the actual natural flavoring agent. Natural vanilla flavor must contain derivitives of the actual vanilla bean. Natural mint flavor must contain derivatives of the mint leaf, etc. Artificial flavors, on the other hand, need not contain any of the original flavoring agent it is attempting to imitate. It is more often than not a chemical compound formulated just for taste. Banana flavor is, more often than not, not formulated from real bananas at all.
Flavoring is usually added to manufactured/processed foods because the process of processing, storing, freezing, etc. the original foods destroys a lot of the original flavors in the foods - the kind you'd get if you prepared it at home from all-natural ingredients.