Real Food Matters: Why Avoid Additives & ‘Natural Flavours’
These days, if you read the ingredients on most supermarket “foods,” you’ll notice one thing straight away, flavour-enhancing additives are everywhere.
Manufacturers now pair claims like ‘no artificial flavours’ or ‘no preservatives’ with ‘natural aromas’ and ‘natural flavours‘, slipping them into more and more products.
When almost every product contains them, we need to understand what they are and how they affect our health. Companies market them as harmless, but their purpose isn’t to nourish us, it’s to make low-quality food taste irresistible.
Questionable Developments
Food companies now use genetics and neuroscience to engineer flavours that lock onto our brain’s reward pathways. They map taste receptors and scan the brain to discover which flavour blends produce the strongest dopamine response. It’s a lucrative field of research that unfolds almost entirely out of view of the people it influences most.
Some labs even use immortalised HEK-293 cell lines; a genetic tool derived from aborted fœtal tissue in the 1970’s. Specifically used in flavour-testing to study how our taste receptors respond to certain compounds. Though these cells allegedly never enter the food, their use demonstrates the weird and not-so-wonderful industry behind modern bio-engineering.
Whether it is for “health, beauty or nutrition”, we’ve clearly come a long way from the wise elder’s truly natural apothecary of old. A forgotten place of caring community, honoured relationships and respect for the human body amongst nature has been burned at the stake to make way for whatever it is we are doing now in the name of profit, progress and innovation.
The companies design products to hit the “bliss point” using our data, often without permission. A development that keeps us reaching for more, even when the ingredients underneath are cheap, processed or nutritionally empty. This is why so many packaged foods feel instantly gratifying, even though they don’t actually satisfy our body.
Flavour Additives Are Designed to Manipulate
Flavour additives are intentionally designed to make products more appealing, memorable, and habit‑forming. There is a huge industry in strategically developing them to influence our choices and push us to consume more, more, always more.
Ingredients listed as ‘natural flavours’ are used in many products but are especially common in food and drinks. In the United States, these additives are the fourth most common ingredient listed on consumer food products (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29140655/).
As more controversies emerge about the health effects of additives, some consumers now avoid products that contain them. But industry adapts quickly. To regain trust, companies developed so-called ‘natural flavours and aromas’.
A False Sense of Security
Research shows many consumers automatically connect terms like ‘natural’ or ‘natural flavour’ with healthiness and purity, even when chemical analyses show little difference from conventional additives.
“Both natural and artificial flavors are synthesized in a lab, often involving hundreds of artificial chemical components. Both are then added to foods that are extensively processed, such that they no longer contain enough of the named ingredient to achieve the flavor the food proposes to have without the use of added flavors. Consumer confusion over these terms has sparked hundreds of lawsuits, while the current convoluted regulatory scheme has done little to address consumers’ misperceptions.” https://www.fdli.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Benavides-FDLJ-77-4.pdf
Phrases that create a false sense of safety because they sound wholesome, pure, and connected to nature. All industries know just how powerful that is. Similarly to the use of green colours or craft / card packaging: people instinctively trust anything labelled ‘natural’, even when the ingredients are anything but.
These tactics have been studied and honed extensively, not in order to provide the best product for us or our environment, but to amass the lowest costs and the most profit for those developing them.
Globally, companies now add flavour compounds to half of all new food and beverage products (https://www.innovamarketinsights.com/trends/global-natural-flavor-trends).
How They Influence the Brain and Behaviour
Flavour is complex; it combines taste, smell, texture, colour. Even the sound on consumption and packaging cues are studied in a bid to appeal to our subconscious urges.
Companies deliberately design all of these aspects to gain a strategic advantage on their competition. When a flavour reliably produces the same pleasure or recalls positive memories, it can build emotional bonds for a brand. This increases trust, repeat purchases and cravings (https://trilogyflavors.com/the-psychology-of-flavor-what-drives-consumer-preference/).
Manufacturers invest in studies on psychology and sensory responses so they can craft flavours to be deeply addictive rather than simply pleasant. This can contribute to overeating highly-processed foods or preferring designer‑flavoured products over simpler, less‑processed and more healthful options.
Even when people know these ultra-processed foods may harm their health, many still reach for them automatically. The behaviour often resembles addiction: repetition without true desire, and sometimes against one’s own intentions. It mirrors the way cigarettes, vaping products, alcohol or drugs hook people through the brain’s reward pathways. Except here we’re not talking about narcotics, but about everyday “foods”… if that word even applies anymore.
Used to Mask Cheap or Ultra-Processed Ingredients
A dip, snack or ready meal might taste rich or “moreish,” but often only because flavour additives are compensating for:
- cheap, low-quality oils
- barely any whole ingredients
- shelf-life demands and long logistics chains
- heavy industrial processing that strips away nutrition and natural taste
This lets companies sell poor-quality food at premium prices. They often add synthetic vitamins and minerals to make up for it, even when the underlying nutritional value is basically nonexistent.
- Harvard explains ultra-processed foods, those loaded with additives lead to worse health outcomes: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/what-are-ultra-processed-foods-and-are-they-bad-for-our-health-2020010918605
‘Natural Flavours’ Can Hide a Lot
The term ‘natural flavours‘ sounds reassuring, but legally it can include many undisclosed aspects:
- solvents
- carriers
- preservatives
- lab-made isolates
- stabilisers
None of these have to be listed individually. You just get one vague umbrella term and most consumers assume it means something close to fruit, herbs or spices.
“Under US regulations, natural flavors are derived from raw materials without any artificial constituents, where artificial refers to synthetic, mineral, or petrochemical substances. […]
The natural status of flavors is not affected by the use of raw materials from genetically modified organisms (GMOs), including those modified using synthetic biology1 methods. Manufacturing processes for declaring flavors as natural have minimal restrictions. […] https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/FR/fr/technical-documents/technical-article/food-and-beverage-testing-and-manufacturing/flavor-and-fragrance-formulation/navigating-natural-flavor-regulations
- 1: Synthetic Biology Is Reshaping Our World in So Many Ways: https://hudsonlabautomation.com/what-products-are-the-result-of-synthetic-biology/
They Train the Palate Away from Whole Foods
When we eat “foods” boosted with natural or synthetic flavour additives, our tastebuds, brains and physiology change.
Simple, whole foods such as vegetables, grains, ferments and homemade goodness can start to feel “bland” in comparison to the engineered, lab derived “food stuffs”.
Pure, nourishing food becomes less appealing, whilst ultra-processed, health-damaging foods are increasingly normalised in society.
When we stop eating whole, minimally processed foods, the diversity of our gut microbiome is affected. Beneficial bacteria decline, harmful eating patterns increase, and inflammation can rise. These changes can affect everything from digestion to emotions and mood through the gut–brain axis (https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/diet-disease-and-the-microbiome-202104212438).
Their Long-Term, Daily Impact Is Still Unclear
Officially, most flavour additives are “considered safe” in isolation, but that’s rarely how they’re consumed. The average person consumes dozens of additive-laden products every day.
Emerging research suggests that the cumulative effect of repeated intake of emulsifiers, preservatives, sweeteners and inflammatory oils may disturb gut health, metabolism and immune balance, even if the impact remains understudied (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38423749).
That’s setting aside the questions of lobbying and research funding that complicate this landscape even further. It’s known that large multinational food companies (Nestlé, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Unilever, General Mills, etc.) also invest enormous amounts of money in persuading governments, regulators, and international bodies.
Their goals typically include:
- influencing food-labelling laws
- delaying or weakening regulations
- shaping “safe levels” of additives, sweeteners, or contaminants
- blocking taxes on sugary or ultra-processed foods
The result is a system where “safe” doesn’t always mean “good for you,” and where what’s allowed isn’t necessarily what’s optimal for health.
- From hidden additives to dodgy claims, learn how food companies use labelling loopholes, and why many previously considered “safe” additives are now under serious scrutiny: https://www.foodwatch.org/en/campaigns/additives/food-additive-safety-and-consumer-transparency-issues
The Real Issue: They Replace Life
Flavour additives make it easier for companies to sell ultra-processed foods that are void of nutrition. The food has no vibrant, organic life essence remaining, just products with chemical compounds that trick our brains into thinking we are satisfied. This makes it harder for people to reconnect with:
- nutritious cooking as a skill and tangible declaration of love
- respect for our environment, natural cycles and seasonality
- sourcing local, whole ingredients that benefit people in the community
- developing personal taste and exploring real flavours full of health
- nourishment developed in harmony with nature rather than detached and in a lab
The more flavour additives dominate the food landscape, the further we drift from traditional, nutrient-dense eating that allowed our genetics to survive generations.
So What’s the Alternative?
It’s simple:
Prepare more things ourselves. Buy locally and in-season whole ingredients. Choose mostly minimally processed foods. If there is a big brand and heavy marketing, be suspicious.
It doesn’t need to be perfect home cooking all the time. Just a shift back toward body coherent nutrition in respect for our seasons and environment, using ingredients our physiology recognises and knows how to thrive with.
Conclusion
‘Natural flavour’ additives may seem harmless, but they’re designed to intensify taste, disguise poor-quality ingredients and keep us reaching for more. While allegedly “safe” in small amounts, their constant presence in average modern diets makes them worth scrutinising.
Choosing whole ingredients, simple recipes and locally grown in-season produce gives better flavour, better nutrition and far fewer hidden chemicals. Avoid unnecessary engineering by industries that care not about our true well-being.
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