— Yvonne Alston

On the very back of the ingredient label, if you actually see something that says like natural seasonings or spices that's typically proprietary information that the maker of that food is trying to hide. You know, they don't wanna give away their secret ingredients, but according to the FDA, it's actually considered to be a spice that includes any aromatic vegetable substance in the whole or broken ground form. So these are basically for seasonings rather than nutritional value as well. Now, if you do see the word natural on the front of a package, that's something quite different. The FDA doesn't actually approve or deny those things. So if you see like naturally baked chips, well there's no real regulation around that at all. But if you do see it on the ingredient label on the back that's typically what that means, is that natural flavoring or spices is typically going to be just for flavor enhancement. And it does have to be derived from a vegetable for flavor enhancement as well. So I hope that helps.