Do we really want "Natural" flavorings???

[Lyndagayle]

My hubby sent me this link today at work and my teeth nearly hit the floor (and they're not false) when I read a little warning about something in natural flavors. Thought I'd share so everyone else can wonder with me.

[h=3]Castoreum[/h]Castoreum is one of the many nebulous “natural ingredients” used to flavor food. Though it isn’t harmful, it is unsettling. Castoreum is a substance made from beavers’ castor sacs, or .... scent glands. These glands produce potent secretions that help the animals mark their territory in the wild. In the food industry, however, 1,000 pounds of the unsavory ingredient are used annually to imbue foods—usually vanilla or raspberry flavored—with a distinctive, musky flavor.
You’ll find it in: Potentially any food containing “natural ingredients”

I've seen many comments on the forum about people's juice tasting like "...." and now I think I know why.

For the rest of the story:
8 Ingredients You Never Want to See on Your Nutrition Label | Yahoo! Health

 

[Hoosier]

Hmmm, I thought this stuff was well known???

So you're saying that people who are really concerned that their flavors are natural don't know what natural flavors encompass?

Maybe this is like when I asked a vegan, that I knew and I saw using fabric softener, if they had abandoned their vegan ways and then didn't believe me that the ingredient in fabric softener that made it soften was animal fat?

 

[Lyndagayle]

Funny Hoosier! Yeah, I was curious if people who were concerned about using artificial flavors knew what was going in the natural flavors. I try to avoid some things in life that are deemed harmful but I just never got into the all natural and organic stuff. Seems like a lot of fluff and so much more money. I love your wit Hoosier and had a little suspicion that you'd chide in on this one.

 

[Hoosier]

Chide? Me? Who would think such a thing?

 

[Lyndagayle]

Chide? Me? Who would think such a thing?

Oh, not moi....

 

[Lyndagayle]

Chide really wasn't the word I was looking for but is widely used in my neck of the woods when someone jumps in a conversation with their amusing opinion.

 

[ogredog]

You can make vanilla flavoring from cow dung if you really want.

A lot of "natural" flavorings are made from bacteria not what we think of as natural as in straight from a food source. Nasty.

 

[Hoosier]

I once explained all the usual ingredients in ice cream to my sons. They begged me to never tell them how any other food was made. Oddly they seemed most concerned with the ground up bones in it, but that is a common and very natural ingredient. I'll eat chitlins, but I cannot bring myself to eat bologna. (And I used to like bologna before I saw how it was made.) My sons will still eat bologna because I have never told them what is in it.

I've worked on farms. I've lived for weeks at a time without another human being within 70 miles. I know what natural is.

 

[mwa102464]

I bet you enjoy Sausage to Hoosier hahahah

 

[Lyndagayle]

I once explained all the usual ingredients in ice cream to my sons. They begged me to never tell them how any other food was made. Oddly they seemed most concerned with the ground up bones in it, but that is a common and very natural ingredient. I'll eat chitlins, but I cannot bring myself to eat bologna. (And I used to like bologna before I saw how it was made.) My sons will still eat bologna because I have never told them what is in it.

I've worked on farms. I've lived for weeks at a time without another human being within 70 miles. I know what natural is.

Oh lawd, I don't even want to know about bologna. I eat far too much of it and enjoy it when I do. Nothing I like better than a lunch of small stick bologna sliced up on crackers with mustard and sharp cheddar cheese....yum (I think) lol

 

[zoiDman]

My hubby sent me this link today at work and my teeth nearly hit the floor (and they're not false) when I read a little warning about something in natural flavors. ...

Well you had better pick up your Teeth for this one. Because they are going to Fall Out Again.

http://inhabitat.com/starbucks-admi...s-are-colored-with-crushed-parasitic-beetles/

Crushed Up Beetles. Ummm Ummm Good.

 

[Lyndagayle]

This thread is getting quite interesting. I never would have imagined.....beetles in Starbucks, ugh. Artificial never looked so good!

 

[zoiDman]

This thread is getting quite interesting. I never would have imagined.....beetles in Starbucks, ugh. Artificial never looked so good!

Doesn't that kinda Blow your Mind?

If Starbucks wants their Strawberry Smoothie to be Red-er, Maybe they should just add Chrushed up Strawberries?

But I guess that would add 7 Cents more and Ruin the Profit Margin on a $9 Drink.

 

[Hoosier]

Yeah, there aren't many sausages I can bring myself to eat...

Oddly this education in meat processing came about because they stopped putting eyes in my grandfather's headcheese. So it was offf to the place where they did that stuff so he could put the eyes in a batch of headcheese. I always hated headcheese, but could bring myself to eat it as long as there were no eyes.

 

[rondasherrill]

Mmmmm... Chicken nuggets... Say hello to mechanically separated chicken. It

Amazing the stuff we put into our bodies...

 

[Lyndagayle]

Yeah, there aren't many sausages I can bring myself to eat...

Oddly this education in meat processing came about because they stopped putting eyes in my grandfather's headcheese. So it was offf to the place where they did that stuff so he could put the eyes in a batch of headcheese. I always hated headcheese, but could bring myself to eat it as long as there were no eyes.

I can't stand to look at headcheese, gives me the shudders. Seriously, eyeballs? OMG!

 

[zoiDman]

I can't stand to look at headcheese, gives me the shudders. Seriously, eyeballs? OMG!

When I was kid, if me and my sister didn’t do our Chores for the week, we wouldn’t get out allowance.

If this happened More than two weeks in a Month, we were Threatened with having to eat Headcheese.

That stuff Scared the Living Ka-Ka out of me. Still Does!

 

[RosaJ]

OMG, laughing my head off again, you guys are funny! Ever since the term "organic" started being part of the weekly grocery shopping vernacular for some people, I have often wondered if they know what they're really talking about. For instance, a few years ago one of my coworkers told me that raw milk was the best thing you could drink as it was "organic." I looked at her in disbelief and clarified that I would agree with her if the "organic" raw milk had just come out of the cow's udder. But I would never be caught dead buying "organic" raw milk from a health food store or any grocery store for that matter. There was a mighty good reason why pasteurization and homogenization was invented.

Also, I really don't want to expose my body to any "natural" fertilizer in my vegetables. Don't people know that kind of "organic" fertilizer is either unprocessed human feces or unprocessed animal feces? Maybe that's why we've had so many ecoli outbreaks recently. Not everything that is "natural" is good for the human body... I personally don't want to revert to the middle ages.

 

[my4jewels]

Not to mention that natural and organic flavors will probably cut down on the life of our cartos...

 

[durgidog]

How It's Made - Hot Dogs - YouTube