Naturally flavored with other natural flavors

[Herr Kutz]

I keep seeing this slogan on packaged food and can't help but think it's incredibly redundant. I'm beginning to think a double positive equals a negative and food marked with this slogan is actually unnatural.

 

[lxskllr]

It means it's enhanced, and maybe not enhanced with something directly related to the flavor you're eating, but still natural.

 

[OverVolt]

"Natural Flavors" are the same thing as Artificial Flavors just extracted from the actual foodstuff. So for example Banana Natural Flavor actually has some kind of contaminant in it from extracting it from bananas so they never use it, lol. Its basically moot they are more or less the same thing.

'With other flavors" is going to be a mixture of things added for flavor. So like... Strawberry natural flavor with little strawberry flakes, is how I would imagine that goes.

 

[FeuerFrei]

If "natural flavors" is listed as an ingredient, the food is naturally bland after processing so they had to artificially inject some flavor. Which means "natural flavors" is false. If the food had natural flavor it would be inherent in the food, not added - and not present in the ingredient list.
I've never noticed any redundance though.

 

[Kaido]

So there's actually a huge misconception to consumers (on purpose, it's sneaky marketing terminology confusion) about what natural & artificial flavors really are. Think of natural flavors as a brand name for a chemical set. Technically, at the beginning of the process, they use extracts & other crap from natural sources ("natural" sources including stuff like bark...no joke), but they basically combine a ton of chemicals into a secret formula (sometimes the mix has as high as 100 chemicals in it) that is generically labelled "natural flavors". The point is to create a flavor & smell that resembles the food you're buying, but amplifies the flavor. It's like a custom chemical MSG cocktail, tweaked for whatever brand & food product is being sold. You can get away with putting all kinds of garbage under that labeling. That, combined with high fructose corn syrup, and you can replicate just about any sweet flavor you want. Ever see a drink that says 0% juice, but somehow tastes like the fruit pictured on the label? That's lab magic right there for you!

The main difference between natural & artificial flavors is that with artificial flavors, you can synthesize them from a chemical in a lab, whereas natural flavors have to be sourced from an actual plant or animal, which makes them more expensive to make. As far as chemical approvals go, we have a terrible inheritance system called GRAS, or "generally recognized as safe" (read up), which lets companies put garbage into our food that is known to cause issues & is even banned in other countries, but because our political system is powered by financially-backed lobbies, we're hosed! So GRAS is basically like a shell company front for seedy activities...it lets companies hide the actual ingredients behind the terms "natural flavoring" or "artificial flavoring", without telling you what you're actually eating. Most sources are whatever, but some are from really nasty or weird sources that you wouldn't normally eat. And because none of them kill you quickly, it's like the tobacco industry...we know that smoking will generally kill you eventually, but you can keep customers strung along for long enough to have long-term profits, so it works!

The problem is, nobody cares. Unless you're a health nut who avoids processed food or have some kind of food allergy, that information changes nothing in terms of eating habits for the vast majority of people. Plus, how else would I get to enjoy my black-bunned Halloween Whopper that makes me poop green?

 

[Kaido]

"Natural Flavors" are the same thing as Artificial Flavors just extracted from the actual foodstuff. So for example Banana Natural Flavor actually has some kind of contaminant in it from extracting it from bananas so they never use it, lol. Its basically moot they are more or less the same thing.

'With other flavors" is going to be a mixture of things added for flavor. So like... Strawberry natural flavor with little strawberry flakes, is how I would imagine that goes.

The example I always cite is orange juice. I grew up right next to all of the orange farms in Florida. There is a peak season when the flavor is the best & that's it. So what they do is stick all of the OJ into giant vats, let it sit for up to a year, and then remix it with chemical flavoring (and some other goodness) into a product that they can sell as fresh, natural orange juice. Complete marketing garbage. There's no way you can get (1) a uniform flavor in every bottle or box of OJ, and (2) peak flavor in non-peak seasons without resorting to some sort of chemical cocktail to enhance the flavor. Some good reading:

http://civileats.com/2009/05/06/freshly-squeezed-the-truth-about-orange-juice-in-boxes/

But eh, nobody cares. OJ tastes good & we don't have to squeeze it ourselves, so hurray!