For example on my sparkling water it’s flavored with “natural flavors” but is still zero sugar and zero calories
In: Chemistry
Flavors are chemicals that the human tongue and nose has receptors for. If you want to taste vanilla you’re going to need some C8H8O3. Where to get it? Well, vanilla beans are full of the stuff, but they come from an orchid and are expensive. Lignin from plants however also contains C8H8O3 and you can use various solvents and other chemicals to extract it more cheaply than you can from a vanilla bean. Sometimes these flavor chemical recipes are their own thing, like how “wild cherry natural flavor” doesn’t taste much like a real cherry fruit, it’s just a tasty recipe cooked up in a natural flavor lab. The use of natural makes people think it means it comes from the actual thing it’s supposed to taste like, but other terms like “extract” are used for that. These flavor molecules aren’t really something the body can break down into sugars to fuel cells, so they’re zero calories.
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