Food with artificial ingredients should not be part of your daily diet, and reading labels is one way to ensure you’re making informed decisions when purchasing meals, snacks and treats.
Natural and artificial flavors are frequently included in processed food products because their use allows manufacturers to better manage production than whole natural ingredients.
What is a natural flavor?
Natural flavors are a term you have likely come across on many packaged food and beverages, meant to add taste without providing any nutritional value. Many consumers tend to purchase foods labeled with natural flavors because they believe that this choice is healthier than artificial flavorings. But what exactly is natural flavoring?
“Natural” flavoring must come from natural sources like fruits, vegetables or meat to qualify as such. According to FDA definition, natural flavors can include essential oils or compounds extracted from spices, fruits or fruit juice, vegetables or vegetable oil, edible yeast cultures, edible yeast spores, bark buds roots leaves and similar plant material; meat seafood poultry eggs or dairy products as sources.
Note that just because a product contains natural flavors does not mean it is free from other chemicals; natural flavors could contain hundreds of chemicals combined into one flavoring agent, and food manufacturers do not need to disclose which natural ingredients they are using.
What is an artificial flavor?
Although FDA requirements vary depending on products and materials used, in general a natural flavor is defined as any essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive of protein hydrolysate or distillate, including any product thereof (excluding spices, fruit or vegetable juices, edible yeast products, edible yeast products from herbs bark bud root leaf material used as edible yeast food product and meat or dairy products).
Artificial flavors are created through chemical synthesis of their components in a laboratory and then blended together by trained flavorists in order to produce desired profiles of flavor profiles.
Manufacturers can leverage this to quickly and economically create desired flavors more quickly with synthetic ingredients than using natural materials that must be grown, harvested and processed before being stored for long-term storage or transported long distances to be processed into something edible. Furthermore, there simply are not enough natural ingredients available globally to meet demand for popular flavors like vanilla or chocolate that manufacturers need to meet global consumer expectations.
What is the difference between a natural and artificial flavor?
Most would likely agree that food tastes better when enhanced with natural sweetness, saltiness, or savoryiness. But what exactly are these “natural” or “artificial” flavors composed of? Ultimately all flavors consist of chemical compounds. To be considered “natural”, however, an ingredient must come from a natural source such as extracting it from vanilla beans or creating it in the laboratory with FDA-approved chemicals.
Artificial flavors, on the other hand, are produced artificially in a laboratory to match any flavor profile without needing to extract extract from natural sources. They have become one of the four most prevalent food ingredients used in American products.
What is the difference between a natural and artificial sweetener?
Natural sweeteners such as stevia, xylitol and erythritol are processed differently by our bodies than processed sugars or artificial flavors; they’re quickly absorbed into our bloodstreams and used as energy instead of being stored as fat reserves. Plus they tend to be lower calorie count options that often even provide additional nutritional benefits – such as fiber from stevia!
The FDA defines natural flavors as any flavor extracted from spices, fruits or fruit juice, vegetables or vegetable oils, edible yeast, meats or poultry products as well as dairy, egg or fermentation-related fermentation products of any kind.[1]
Synthetic, or artificial flavors are created using chemically manufactured raw materials and may include mixtures of chemicals. Manufacturers frequently utilize synthetic flavors as cost-cutting measures that provide similar flavor profiles as natural flavors but do not undergo rigorous safety evaluations like those for naturally-sourced flavor additives.
