Tamara Mannelly

Are Natural Flavors Really Natural? - www.ohlardy.com
Print Friendly, PDF & Email

By: Natasha Longo, Prevent Disease

Waking Times


Food Scientists Creating Addiction - www.ohlardy.com


Companies like Givaudan and Cargill create and manufacture flavors for a wide variety of foods, beverages, confections, pharmaceuticals (including chewable medications and liquid prescriptions), oral care products (like toothpaste and mouthwash), cosmetics (including lip balm), nutrition products (vitamins and sports gels), and even pet food. And in fact, the general principles they follow are very similar to what’s done in the perfume industry.


What’s The Difference Between Natural and Artificial Flavors?

Natural and artificial flavors are defined for the consumer in the Code of Federal Regulations. A key line from this definition is the following: “a natural flavor is 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.” So the flavor has no other function but to fool the brain into thinking it is consuming the real thing. Just as their artificial counterparts, all natural flavors are created in labs with chemicals. Food companies take the definition and through legal loopholes can actually create biosynthetic compounds identical to the real thing, but they’re not the real thing. Bottom line is they are still artificially created flavors, but they are permitted the “natural flavor” label due to the formal definition.

There is less a matter of legal definition than the “real” or practical difference between these two types of flavorings. There is little substantive difference in the chemical compositions of natural and artificial flavors. They are both made in a laboratory by a trained professional, a “flavorist,” who blends appropriate chemicals together in the right proportions. The flavorist uses “natural” bioidentical chemicals to make natural flavorings and “synthetic” chemicals to make artificial flavorings. The flavorist creating an artificial flavoring must use the samechemicals in his formulation as would be used to make a natural flavoring, however. Otherwise, the flavoring will not have the desired flavor. The distinction in flavorings–natural versus artificial–comes from the source of these identical chemicals and may be likened to saying that an apple sold in a gas station is artificial and one sold from a fruit stand is natural.




Both types of flavoring have been linked to neurotoxicity, organ, developmental, reproductive toxicity and cancer.

How Flavor Engineers Get Us Addicted To Foods


How do they master their science? They know exactly how the human mind and the body’s receptors work. The brain’s pleasure center is known to proceed through nerve cells that signal using the neurochemical dopamine. Dopaminergic neurons exhibit a “remarkable capacity” to pass on pleasure signals. Unfortunately, the evolutionary processes that attached pleasure to advantageous behaviors also accidentally reinforced bad ones.


When flavor engineers design their chemical concoctions, they have a profound understanding of these biological systems and the molecular events that form such “reward memories” so that people become addicted to foods.

MSG (monosodium glutamate) is a good example. It hides behind dozens of names in thousands of foods, such as natural flavouring and yeast extract. MSG is not a nutrient, vitamin, or mineral and has no health benefits. It is an excitotoxin which are substances, usually amino acids, that react with specialized receptors in the brain in such a way as to lead to destruction of certain types of brain cells. Excitotoxins stimulate the reward system of the brain, so we think it tastes better (than it actually does) and consequently consume more.

Flavorists also try to create foods that consumers crave. And in fact, in an interview with CBS, Givaudan employees did not deny that this is what they’re trying to do — create food addictions. It’s “a good word,” they admitted, and that they’re trying to develop “something that [consumers] want to go back for again and again.”

Secret Tricks of The Trade




Once the compounds have been selected, the chemists use a “flavor profile” to help them architect the taste they’re trying to simulate. This profile is typically constructed with mathematical assistance, allowing the chemists to make the most minutest of adjustments — what’s typically measured in parts per million (ppm). These adjustments can create super flavors where the taste of let’s say strawberry is concentrated 10 or 20 times then diluted throughout the food products of choice depending on how various chemicals might react to one another, and whether the mixtures will lend themselves to cooking.

A study last year made headlines after it raised concerns about chronic exposure of workers in industry to a food flavoring ingredient used to produce the distinctive buttery flavor and aroma of microwave popcorn, margarines, snack foods, candy, baked goods, pet foods and other products. The artificial butter flavoring ingredient Diacetyl (DA) was found to penetrate the blood-brain barrier and intensify the damaging effects of an abnormal brain protein linked to Alzheimer’s disease.


One of the great scams of the industrial food cartel is the so-called “fresh” orange juice sold in supermarkets. There is a great video from author Alissa Hamilton who wrote a book on the subject called ‘Squeezed: What You Don’t Know About Orange Juice.’


The commercialization of natural flavors has increased more than 67% in the last decade alone. Many health conscious consumers are now avoiding artificial flavors so the industry is ramping up efforts to replace artificial flavors with natural ones, but essentially there is little difference. Don’t be fooled.

About the Author











Recommended Reading

Ditch the artificial flavors with this natural toothpaste!



Pin it for later–> 

Are Natural Flavors Really Natural? - www.ohlardy.com


2 Comments on “Are Natural Flavors Really Natural?”

  1. Pingback: Know What's In Your Food | Jill Conyers

  2. Pingback: Pale-O May-O | Kettlebells and Bacon Fat

Leave a Reply

You have to agree to the comment policy.

CommentLuv badge