Natural Flavor is bad, and other #facepalm claims

Last night, in my search for something to pass the time at O'Hare as I endured another flight delay, and high priced low quality box wine I found myself staring at my hand held addiction. I was perusing social media, checking out brand pages, looking at memes to send to my wife, and really anything to pass the time in between people watching at the gate.

During my perusing I happened upon a well known food brand that was touting their newest food product. Boldly claiming, we are better than the next other super clean labeled food company that we just mimicked. What was their bold claim of differentiation? NO NATURAL FLAVORS.

For a moment, I just sat their dumbfounded. This is how far we have gone to differentiate ourselves from the next brand? Let me first start by saying, I am 100% for marketing, branding, setting the stage to show that the products each company makes are a step above with regards to quality, without overstepping any misbranding type claims (which is another box of worms that I'll share from my soapbox another day). I am also for clean labeling, minimal ingredients, and high quality food for every single person on earth.

But natural flavors is the next big trend you are going to protest against? Have we become that bored with cage free, non gmo, grass fred, grain free, gluten free, organic, and every other type of "free" we can think of? Natural flavors, not artificial flavors, NATURAL FLAVORS are now an issue?

Sometimes I believe we as an industry are our own worst enemy. We take a very defined, simple ingredient that has been around before biblical times, and now crusade (pun intended) against everyone who uses that as if they were an evil, big pharma loving, GMO eating, BPA injecting, chem trail villain?

The Code of Federal Regulations, under Title 21 CFR 101 clearly defines what should be labeled as a natural flavor, spice, etc. I won't rehash it all, but it's about as definitive of a ruling as we get in our food processing world.

Simply put, spices can be labeled as spices, flavors are labeled as flavors (either artificially made and not derived from the substance being made to mimic, versus natural flavor which is in short an essential oil, or extract of the substance it is intended to be used as). Any food normally thought of as a food should be labeled as its common name, IE Onion. No, MSG is not a flavoring, and no its not labeled as a flavoring, unless you are breaking the law. Also, potassium sorbate isn't a flavoring, and no food companies aren't secretly adding it in without labeling it, unless they are breaking the law. No, natural flavors dont contain allergens unless they are labeled to have allergens, food companies aren't hiding allergens in natural flavors, unless they are breaking the law.

YEP, the same essential that you are using in your newly found homeopathic ointment you love that is ultra clean and breaking away from those disgusting chemically laden ointments is now bad, if you believe in the buzz. I supposed the three wisemen were real jerks for bringing that frankincense and myrrh essential oil to the late, great JC for a birthday gift. YEP, throw away that bottle of Adam's vanilla extract that your grandmother handed down to you as the secret ingredient in her rum cake (side note, there is only one Vanilla Extract, and that's Adam's Vanilla Extract #notapaidad), even though the secret ingredient is really drink as much rum as you put in the cake before its done baking.

So here I sat, reading comment after comment on this social media page, cheering for this companies new found marketing bravado. The assault on natural flavoring.

Commenters were going off the rails: natural flavor means you are hiding something, natural flavor is awful, I won't buy food with natural flavor, thank you for not adding in natural flavor, etc. Dont get me wrong, know your customer base, create products for your consumer base, but let's not alienate something that is not the evil gorgomon from the upside down in our food products. Not only that, we are now teaching consumers that something that is a simple ingredient, is now a super scary disgusting bad ingredient. #facepalm

Yes, I understand people may have an issue with processing aids, though most companies that use natural flavors are already stripping them down to essentially extracts on organic alcohol to meet other organic and non gmo consumer demand. But let's temper our anger, flavorings seldom make up more than 2% of the total weight of any food product. Even if it did have glycol as an extraction agent (which I dont like using), those 1.99 bottomless mimosa's you are throwing down at Saturday brunch are probably 1000000x (this is a made up number) worse for you.

I totally get the move to cleaner label foods, and I champion the effort! I am a proponent of cleaning up ingredients and including better options in the development of every single food product. Make it as simple and clean labeled as possible. Replace preservatives wherever there are adequate alternatives, make products as wholesome as scientifically possible and commercially available, even if it pushes your product to a higher price point. People want wholesome food, but we shouldn't voluntarily start bashing something that has been created long before modern scientists ever dreamed of cost reducing rosemary essential oil.

Okay, I'm done here, my wife sent me about 15 memes I have to catch up on, and back to enjoying your lab grown burgers with fake blood, while you totes blog that natural flavors are OMG bad. Thanks for listening, or reading, if you are even still here at this point. Let's chill on beating up natural flavorings, your grandmother's rum cake is calling, and your new rosemary bergamot salve isn't going to apply itself.

-Travis Berger, CFS

P.S. I am not an author, mostly a smartass, a food scientist, but there are probably grammatical errors in there. I'll do better next time, I'm sorry Mr. Polasek (my HS AP English teacher), wherever you are now. Also, disclaimer for the legal eagles: these are my own independent thoughts and opinions. They do not represent any affiliation I have with any other entity, business, corporation, or any other realized matter organic or inorganic.