Artificial vs. Natural Flavors
So what are artificial and natural flavors, and how are they different from one another? The main difference between a natural and artificial flavor is the origin of the flavor chemical. Natural flavors must be derived from plant or animal material, while artificial flavors are synthesized from scratch in a lab.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: AVOID artificial flavors. They are loaded with chemicals and have one job: excite your brain and make you consume an unhealthy amount of them. The more this happens, the more likely you, the consumer will continually buy their products. Many of these chemicals also lead to long-term gut health and diabetes as most of these products are loaded with sugar.
Natural flavors… doesn’t sound bad, right? They are made with “natural” ingredients, so they have to be better for you, right? WRONG. Natural flavors are NOT regulated by the government and the only rule companies have to follow is that they have to START with something natural i.e. a vanilla bean, chocolate, a blueberry. After that... Anything goes. Scientists can add up to 100 chemicals if they want, after only extracting flavor molecules from the vanilla bean, chocolate, or blueberry.
Just like artificial flavors, the chemicals used are designed to make you addicted to their food, forcing you to crave it more and more. You’ll see companies all of the time label their food on the front with “NO Artificial Flavors!” and/or “Made with Natural Flavors!” Using a buzzword like “Natural” is designed to fool the consumer into thinking what they are buying is healthy for them.
So what should you look for instead? The ACTUAL ingredient that makes the flavor. For example, if you are buying strawberry yogurt, you should see listed in the ingredients “strawberries”. As I’ve said before, though, natural flavors are VERY common in grocery stores. It is much cheaper to artificially make flavors in a lab than it is to farm, harvest, ship, etc., the actual food.
