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I would like to know when reading ingredients on labels and its says natural flavorings what are they and is it all right to purchase that product?

Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Recorded

This event was on January 18, 2022

Join Chef Dan Marek in his virtual office as he welcomes all of your questions. This event was created for you and we encourage you to Ask Anything – from cooking techniques to course-specific questions, to how to turn your cooking passion into profit or simply hearing the perspective of a professional chef, Chef Dan is ready to answer them all.

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Question

Yvonne Alston

I would like to know when reading ingredients on labels and its says natural flavorings what are they and is it all right to purchase that product?

Answer

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.

Dan Marek

Director of Plant-Based Culinary & Dev

*Dan Marek* is a chef educator who has been teaching vegan and vegetarian cooking for over 15 years. At Rouxbe, he is our Director of Plant-Based Culinary and Development where he helps develop content, classes and builds courses for many of our partners. Dan is a board member of Slow Food Austin, the Institute of Child Nutrition, and Conscious Capitalism. He has earned his BA in Journalism from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University and holds certificates in Nutrition from Cornell University. Prior to his role with Rouxbe, Dan worked with Whole Kids Foundation training teachers and food service at schools across the country on nutrition and culinary best practices. He also worked as a Healthy Eating Educator at Whole Foods Market’s flagship store in Austin, TX, was a personal chef for some of Austin’s elite business people, taught classes in culinary techniques at Austin Community College, The Natural Epicurean, and Le Cordon Bleu. Dan also regularly volunteers cooking or speaking about nutrition for the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Marathon Kids, Health Alliance for Austin Musicians, and the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Austin and Central Texas.