There’s a lot being said in the news these days about natural and artificial flavors, including how they are used and whether they are worthy of concern. FlavorFacts is here to help consumers better understand the role these ingredients play in so many of the foods and beverages we all enjoy.

Before we explore natural and artificial flavors, it is important to understand what makes up our food. People sometimes refer to the “chemicals” in our food in a tone intended to instill fear assuming that the only chemicals in our food are ones added by food manufacturers. Our food is made up of chemicals! Everything around us – trees, vegetables, fruits and animals (including humans) are made up of chemicals. And yes, they sometimes have long, confusing names that can be a bit hard to pronounce, making them appear foreign and strange. For example, the following list of chemicals all sound a bit intimidating, right?

Butyric Acid	Capric Acid	Palmitic Acid	Linoleic Acid
Caproic Acid	Lauric Acid	Stearic Acid	Linolenic Acid
Caprylic Acid	Myristic Acid	Oleic Acid	Arachidonic Acid

Would you eat anything that contained all those chemicals?

Chances are good that you already do – they are some of the primary components of milk. Likewise, check out all the chemicals that occur naturally in a banana. Some of them have big, strange names, but if you like bananas, you’ve been eating these your entire life.

What is the difference between natural and artificial flavors?

Flavors that are added to the foods that we enjoy are created by the combination of many – sometimes dozens – naturally occurring chemicals called flavoring substances. For example, highly trained flavorists understand which flavoring substances give a strawberry its flavor and are able to isolate them and use them to create strawberry flavor in other foods.

Many people enjoy foods and drinks with a strawberry flavor, but there are only so many strawberries grown each year, and isolating the “perfect” strawberry flavor from strawberries to use in other foods sometimes isn’t possible. By isolating the components of a strawberry that impart flavor, however, researchers can identify their chemical composition and then duplicate it. This is one of the essential differences between “natural” and “artificial” flavors. Natural flavors come directly from foods and other natural sources, while many artificial flavors are duplicates of, or are very similar to, natural flavors. The United States Food and Drug Administration has clearly defined what constitutes “natural flavor,” which you can read here.

What about “incidental additives”?

Flavors added to foods are a mixture of ingredients, some that impart a specific flavor and other ingredients, such as solvents and emulsifiers, that help the added flavor do its job in the food to which it is added. Flavors are typically very effective – a little goes a long way. In fact, the concentrations of individual flavoring substances that we can sense can often be measured in foods and beverages in “parts per million,” and some are even measured in “parts perbillion.” To put that in context, one part per million is analogous to one inch in 16 miles, while one part per billion is comparable to one drop of milk in one of the largest dairy tanker trucks.

Because flavors that are added to foods are used in very small amounts it is important to keep them evenly distributed throughout the food or beverage. The way to do this is to use solvents and emulsifiers—additives that help keep the flavor evenly distributed.

The additives used as solvents and emulsifiers are also used at low levels, and their safety has been long-recognized by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other regulatory agencies around the world. And many of them aren’t just used in flavors; these same solvents and emulsifiers are fundamentally important for use in a wide variety of foods and beverages to keep small amounts of other ingredients and nutrients evenly distributed.

How are flavors used?

At FlavorFacts, we like to think of flavor being used to create memories. Think about warm chocolate chip cookies or savory stuffing on your Thanksgiving table. Flavor is also about discovery. Remember the first time you ate barbecue-flavored potato chips or a cup of tropical fruit-flavored ice cream? Flavor encompasses the entire range of experiences when we eat or drink something and includes the taste, smell and even what the food feels like in our mouth (for example, something might be hot like cinnamon or cold like spearmint).

Interestingly, flavors can also be added to foods and drinks whose inherent flavor is lost during processes designed to keep foods safe, like pasteurization. For example, when some fruit juices are pasteurized, some flavor is lost. Flavor can be added to pasteurized juice to keep it tasting good until you drink it. Just think about how unsafe our food would be if it were not pasteurized!

Are flavors safe?

In a word, yes. FlavorFacts has written in the past about how flavors are evaluated by the FEMA Expert Panel and how the FDA, the European Food Safety Authority, the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare and the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives all agree on the safety of these ingredients. The Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association (FEMA) has written extensively about the process through which flavors are evaluated, which you can read here.

So what’s in the flavor in my food?

Some people think that just because the actual ingredients that are used to impart flavor in foods or drinks are not disclosed, the industry must have something to hide. Yes, flavor companies are protective of their flavor formulas, much like chefs are protective of their recipes. They rely on protecting the research and creativity evident in their flavor formulas so they can continue providing consumers exciting flavors in their foods and drinks.

While the exact recipes are protected by flavorists, the list of possible flavor ingredients that could be used to create flavors is available for everybody to see – the list of ingredients (the industry’s expansive “spice rack,” so to speak) is published and available from the U.S. flavor association, the Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association (FEMA). Information about each ingredient, including its safety data, can be provided by FEMA.

It is important to note that flavor recipes not only need to conform to federal regulations, they need to conform to the claims made by the food or beverage they are added to – for instance, if a food is labelled as being “kosher,” then everything used to create the flavors (including the solvents and emulsifiers) must also be certified as kosher. Likewise, if a food is labelled as Vegan or Halal, all the flavors and the materials used to create the flavors must also be Vegan or Halal.

No Concern

The bottom line is that flavors are safe. Decades of research, governmental inquiries and studies conducted by other groups all confirm the safety of these ingredients. Natural and artificial flavors must conform not only to strict regulatory requirements, they must also meet the needs of food and beverage manufacturers and consumers for safe and delicious flavors and foods.

The Flavor and Extract Manufacturers Association of the United States (FEMA) was founded in 1909 and is the national association of the U.S. flavor industry.  FEMA’s membership is comprised of flavor manufacturers, flavor users, flavor ingredient suppliers, and others with an interest in the U.S. flavor industry.  The association is committed to ensuring a safe supply of flavor ingredients used in foods and beverages enjoyed by billions of men, women, and children around the world.