Pick up any packaged processed food, and there's a decent chance that one of its listed ingredients will be "natural flavor". The ingredient sounds good, particularly in contrast to "artificial flavor". But what exactly does natural flavor mean? It refers to extracts (提取物) got from natural sources like plants, meat or seafood. When consumers see "natural flavor" on a label, they are unlikely to assume that someone is squeezing the juice from oranges into their bottle. They know even though natural flavor must come from natural sources, it needn't all come from the plant or meat. For example, orange flavor might contain not only orange extract, but also extracts from bark and grass. Nor is the common belief true that ingredients extracted from nature are necessarily safer than something artificially made.
So if flavors like orange are needed, why not just use oranges? The answer comes down to "availability, cost and sustainability", according to flavor chemist Gary Reineccius of the University of Minnesota. "If you're going to use all your grapes on grape soda," Reineccius says, "you don't have any grapes for wine making; the products are going to be exorbitant; besides, what do you do with the by-products you create after you've squeezed all the juice out of the grape?"
Actually, while chemists make natural flavors by extracting chemicals from natural ingredients, artificial flavors are made by creating the same chemicals artificially. The reason why companies bother to use natural flavors rather than artificial flavors is simple: marketing. "Many of these products have health titles," says Platkin, professor from Hunter College. "Consumers may be talked to believe products with natural flavors are healthier, though they're nutritionally no different from those with artificial flavors. Natural flavors may involve more forest clear-cutting and carbon emissions from transport than flavors created in the lab."
Platkin suggests getting more transparent labeling on packaging that describes exactly what the natural or artificial flavors are, so consumers are not misled into buying one product over another because of "natural flavors". Reineccius also offers some simple guidance: "Don't buy anything because it says ‘natural flavors'. Buy it because you like it."
