What is Up With Labelling Laws Anyway???

The definition of natural flavour under the Code of Federal Regulations is: “the essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis, which contains the flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof, whose significant function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional” (21CFR101.22)

So what does this mean?  I have read the above statement over many many times and to me it seems that if a flavouring ingredient can be isolated from any plant or animal in any way it can be called a natural flavour.  It seems that any isolated chemical or ingredients that can be derived from fermentation would also qualify.  This doesn’t mean these ingredients are necessarily bad… but they CAN be.  The problem is often that they are labeled under this umbrella term and we just have no way of knowing short of phoning up every single company we purchase food from and asking them directly.

My journey with “natural flavours” started when I realized that the “natural and artificial flavours” in my herbal tea were not serving me. That’s right, herbal tea. In Vancouver we have some amazing tea stores. Let’s call them Smeevana and Smavid’s Tea.  Reading the ingredients on their websites I found that there were very few if any teas that did not contain “natural flavours”.  When I inquired about the addition of these flavours I found out that they were responsible for most of the taste of the herbal tea blends.  These boutique stores offer really exciting flavours that take you on a sleigh ride or to a tropical paradise and none of that flavour is really derived from the pieces of coconut or cacao nibs in the tea blend.  One representative said that they could not make their teas without “natural flavours” and I believe they are right.  I certainly think herbal tea, even with natural flavours, is a big improvement over coffee or coca cola but we are each in our own place making improvements from where we stand today.

What did I do?? I set out to make my own tea of course. I knew rooibos had a taste, peppermint, lavender, orange peels… with so many flavourful herbs to choose from certainly I could make some tea and take myself on a Tea-cation if these big stores couldn’t help me. While I love the taste of peppermint I discovered there were not many other herbs that would really make the tea taste strong enough AND I was not able to achieve the layers of flavour that they could with their “natural flavours”. Naturally (puns always intended) I was distraught. There is only so much Hibiscus a girl can drink. This is when I started adding essential oils and extracts to my teas although it certainly isn’t necessary… Really helped with the withdrawal from Smeevana which has now gone out of business 🙁

At the same time as my tea experiments were taking place I was participating in some other experiments. We were working on developing a kids’ yogurt. We wanted it nut free for schools, balanced in omega 3 and 6 fats and featuring cool colours and flavours for kids.  I started experimenting with essential oils and Medicine Flower extracts along with freeze dried fruits.  We had to use the freeze dried stuff so that we wouldn’t have to pulverize and cook the fresh fruit to death.  I thought I had come up with something really great. When I approached my partner with the recipe he came back with the worst news ever: If we were going to use pure extracts or essential oils in our products…. WE WOULD HAVE TO LABEL THEM “NATURAL FLAVOURS”!!! We are literally still trying to figure out whether we could put “natural flavours (essential oil of …)”, whether we would get in trouble and whether there is enough room on the label. These ingredient words on labels are seriously tightly monitored, like the nutrition facts, and it’s not usually in our favour as consumers.

Working up a bit of a sweat writing this…

How could something as fantastic as orange essential oil be lumped under the same overarching umbrella category as:

Aspartame
MSG
Beaver anal secretions
Other animal products

So now I ask for your help: I don’t have time to phone every single company, every single tea store and manufacturer of energy bars. Truthfully I don’t really eat stuff in packages. But I do think we all have a right to know. Let us courageously phone people up and ask them “what exactly are you using for natural flavours?” and make our buying decisions accordingly.  Let’s support companies using CO2 extracts as natural flavours and unsupport companies using beaver butt?

If you know something whether it be good bad or ugly, post it in the comments below so we can make choices together.