Natural

I'm currently reading the book, Fast Food Nation. I fully expected this book to contain all kinds of horrifying facts sure to send anyone screaming from their nearest McDonald's restaurant. In truth, there is relatively little in the book that I find surprising so far. There is a fair amount of interesting history of how the industry came to be, and an in depth investigation into the inner workings of food suppliers, franchise agreements, labor standards, etc. Not a thriller by any measure.

One section I found very interesting discusses the semantics surrounding natural and artificial flavoring. We see these ingredients listed on many of the foods we eat. I often read ingredients labels and have always been suspicious of these entries on the list because they are just so darn vague. What's in an artificial flavor?

As it turns out, the vagueness is intentional and authorized by the FDA. In order to protect the secrecy of food recipes, food makers aren't required to list flavor ingredients as long as they are "generally recognized as safe" (GRAS). This designation, after looking at the FDA website, does not appear to imply that the FDA has, itself, determined the safety of the ingredient, but has examined the evidence supplied by applicants, and does not object to it. There are interesting exclusions to this rule as well. For example, additives commonly used in food before 1958 are automatically considered safe.

Also, the difference between the designations natural and artificial are not what one would expect. They both allow for the same list of chemical ingredients. The difference is in how the chemicals are produced. It seems that older methods may be considered natural, while newer, more scientific methods would be designated artificial, even if the latter produced a purer, safer end result. Since the natural designation is more appealing to consumers, those methods are more likely to be used, even though they may result in a less-safe product.

As a result of the GRAS secrecy rule, these flavor recipes contain many chemical ingredients that are not listed. For example, a typical artificial strawberry flavor contains the following:

Amyl acetate, amyl butyrate, amyl valerate, anethol, anisyl formate, benzyl acetate, benzyl isobutyrate, butyric acid, cinnamyl isobutyrate, cinnamyl valerate, cognac essential oil, diacetyl, dipropyl ketone, ethyl acetate, ethyl amylketone, ethyl butyrate, ethyl cinnamate, ethyl heptanoate, ethyl heptylate, ethyl lactate, ethyl methylphenylglycidate, ethyl nitrate, ethyl propionate, ethyl valerate, heliotropin, hydroxyphenyl-2-butanone, a-ionone, isobutyl anthranilate, isobutyl butyrate, lemon essential oil, maltol, 4-methylacetophenone, methyl anthranilate, methyl benzoate, methyl cinnamate, methyl heptine carbonate, methyl naphthyl ketone, methyl salicylate, mint essential oil, neroli essential oil, neronlin, neryl isobutyrate, orris butter, phenethyl alcohol, rose, rum ether, y-undecalactone, vanillin, and solvent.

Remember, all of these ingredients are on the GRAS list. The fact that this is an "artificial" flavor merely indicates how these chemicals were extracted from their sources, not what chemicals are present.

What this means is that when you see the words natural flavor or artificial flavor, you must assume that a list of similar chemicals are likely involved whether it is a strawberry candy or a cup of Stonyfield Farm Organic Strawberry Yogurt.

Buyer beware.