Josh the Aspie’s Blog

A myth that I have heard making the rounds lately is that if you find “Natural Flavoring” on a product, that this product is actually a brand name of an artificial one. After looking into it I’ve found that this is most likely a case of information decay.

The long and short of it, is that “Natural Flavor” or “Natural Flavors” represents flavors that the USDA considers to be natural - which may not be all that natural after all.

Here is how the label “Natural Flavor” is to be used according to the FDA Website. For those interested, here are the actual regulations, in Legalese.

Some criticism comes up on what can be considered “natural” by the USDA. Any plant or animal that has been processed by enzymes can be called a natural flavor. For reference, those enzymes are chemicals, some of which are artificial.

Another rout is that things grown within a fungus can be considered natural. So, if you douse a rotten log if kerosene, mustard gas, and Asbestos, and somehow get some mushrooms to grow on it, you might be able to sell that mushroom, or products made from it as “Natural Flavor.” I doubt anyone would really want to do this, and if you tried you’d probably go to jail for negligence. Still, as I read it, it would not break the regulations on what can or cannot be labaled as a “Natural Flavor”.

One person who seems to encourage the use of artificial flavors says “Distinctions between artificial and natural flavors can be arbitrary and somewhat absurd, based more on how the flavor has been made than on what it actually contains.” Another, who criticizes “Natural Flavor” as not necessarily being so natural says “Unfortunately, natural flavor and artificial flavor are two peas in a pod, they are basically the same thing.”

The idea that “Natural Flavor” is actually artificial can naturally give rise to some theories on how this takes place. Some figure it to be trickery on the part of the corporations, and thus comes about the myth that “Natural Flavor” is a specific artificial flavor with a brand name.

I have done a search for a Trademark on “Natural Flavor”, which is how all brand names are registered with the US. You can replicate the search at the United States Patent Trademark Office. I did find one entry with a word mark consisting only of “Natural Flavor”, but this was simply the text on a specific logo that the company wanted to use and patent.

So the bottom line seems to be that there is no brand name trickery involved here. “Natural Flavor” is not a trade-marked name for a chemical. Unfortunately, it also seems that the classification “Natural Flavor” may be as meaningless as the nice red color of CO2 injected beef. As always, corporations push the envelope as hard as they can to convince customers that what they are getting is wholesome, and the government does little, if anything, about it.

In the end, the surer you want to be of what you are putting on your plate, or that of your children, the further back in the supply chain you have to go, and the more convenience you have to give up to do so.

Anyone have a good inexpensive ice-cream maker for sale?

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 6th, 2010 at 11:19 pm and is filed under Political, Terms. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.