Trying to decide between protein powder flavors. Looked at the ingredients and there almost no difference but the flavors are. So im guessing they come from the “natural flavorings”…what are those?
Some are obscure flavors: cereal milk, coffee and walnuts, speculoos, cookies and cream, chocolate chip cookie, white chocolate raspberry, carrot cake, curcuma latte, banana, strawberries and cream…
In: Chemistry
>The term natural flavor or natural flavoringmeans 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.
https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfrsearch.cfm?fr=501.22
In the U.S., a “natural flavor” generally means some substance or molecule (such as oils or resins) that have been extracted from some plant or animal. The terms also includes materials that are by-products of fermentation.
So, for example, a coffee-flavored food product might contain flavorings extracted from coffee beans, husks, leaves, or parts of the plant which might be in their natural state, or otherwise modified through fermentation, roasting, distillation, and so on.
In most base ingredients, like strawberries, there are one or two chemicals that are responsible for the majority of the ingredient’s flavor. Most industrially produced foods are not flavored with a whole ingredient but, rather, with the specific chemicals responsible for that ingredient’s flavor.
So, for example, if you’re buying a food that has a strawberry flavor to it, its very unlikely that whole strawberries were used to make that food. Instead, the food was likely flavored with Ethyl methylphenylglycidate – which is the chemical primarily responsible for a strawberry’s flavor. The FDA allows food manufacturers to group those flavorings into two categories: natural flavoring and artificial flavoring.
The FDA says that a natural flavoring is any flavor that was derived from some actual food. So, for example, natural strawberry flavor *likely* was produced by liquifying strawberries, evaporating the water, then soaking the mixture in hexane, then distilling the Ethyl methylphenylglycidate out of the hexane.
The FDA says that an artificial flavoring is any flavor that was manufactured from a chemical feedstock. So, for example, artificial strawberry flavor *likely* was produced from a reaction involving what is essentially acetone and vinegar.
You can extract flavours (= aromatics components) from natural stuff with distillation or other similar process.
Note that your “speculoos” flavour is probably made by combining multiple differents extracts rather than extracted directly from the cookies. You may obtain “natural flavouring banana” without using banana at all, but from other natural ingredients
> Some are obscure flavors: cereal milk, coffee and walnuts, speculoos, cookies and cream, chocolate chip cookie, white chocolate raspberry, carrot cake, curcuma latte, banana, strawberries and cream…
You’re thinking too high-level. What makes a raspberry taste like a raspberry? It’s [raspberry ketone.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_ketone) For bananas, it’s [isoamyl acetate.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isoamyl_acetate) These are the scientific names for the very specific molecules that our receptors notice and identify as “raspberry flavor”. Of course, the actual flavor of a raspberry is far more complex and contains many different molecules, but those can also be mimicked to some degree.
Sometimes these molecules are extracted from the fruit itself. Sometimes they’re synthesized in a lab, but chemically identical. Sometimes they’re extracted from another natural source – famously, beavers have an anal scent gland that contains vanillin, the molecule that gives vanilla its flavor.
From the U.S. Food and Drug Adminstration:
*”The term natural flavor or natural flavoring means 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.”*
If everything else is the same on your food items, then the difference is just taste and the companies have a legal right to protect just how they flavor it to get that particular taste.
Separate from your direct question, when comparing tables for protein powder I recommend checking cholesterol. Often overlooked but some brands are extremely high.
That said natural flavors are what they sound like. Flavoring that comes from a source other than a lab.
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