Imagine you want to alter your lifestyle and the first step you are going to make is to change your way of eating. You decide to eat organic, green food instead of food high in fat and sugar. One day you are doing some shopping in the supermarket and you want to buy some yogurt. But when you see the yoghurt on the shelf, you hesitate. Those yogurt with fancy packaging may be high in added sugar and artificial flavors, and you know they might violate your rule of healthy eating. Suddenly, on the inconspicuous corner, you notice a yogurt with the terms: “0 calories, 0 added sugar, 0 artificial flavor, use only natural flavors”. Perfect! That yogurt meet all the requirement for your diet and you put it into your shopping trolley. That is exactly what I thought 2 months ago. But after I learned more about artificial natural flavors, I changed my mind. And I would like to share something I learned with you.
It may be hard for you to believe that natural flavor is not healthier than artificial flavors. Anyone who pay some attention to the nutrition label may not be unfamiliar with the term “artificial flavor” and “natural flavor”. However, most of us prefer natural flavors to artificial flavors because of the word “natural”. We tend to think foods that come from nature are purer and healthier than foods that are made artificially, right? But this is not the truth. According to RDA, any flavors that are synthesized in labs must be labeled as artificial flavors. Artificial and natural flavors may contain exactly the same chemical compounds and it is the producing process that makes them different. For example, amyl acetate, a chemical that could provide the banana flavor, could be produced in a lab after a series of chemical reactions as an artificial flavor. You could also extract it from a banana and this time it becomes a natural flavor [1]. Food companies notice that consumers prefer natural flavors and they play with the words and use natural flavors in order to make their products look more natural and more appealing. As more people started to pay attention to healthy eating, food labeled with “organic, natural and pure” become more and more popular.
The point is that we should keep in mind that natural flavors may be exactly the same with artificial flavors. So when you go shopping next time, you know that most flavored products use chemical additives, no matter they are derived artificially or naturally. From my own opinion, since it is hard to find a packaged food without added flavors, spending time on seeking for food using natural flavor to replace artificial flavor doesn’t mean that much. Instead of focusing on the use of artificial flavors, we could pay more attention to the use of added sugar and fat in food, which may lead to cardiovascular disease.
[1] Source: Schlosser, Eric, “Why the Fries Taste Good”, Food Matters, edited by Holly Bauer, 2nd ed. Pp. 21-26
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