Could you make a food product entirely out of "natural flavors"?

What Chingon and Construct said was fully consistent with what I said, and Chingon, at least, seems to me to be essentially making part of the same point as me: “natural flavors, by definition, have to be additives and not the main substance itself”. You apparently did not understand it, so I thought it might be helpful to spell it out more completely and in more detail. Apparently you still do not understand and you remain confused, only now you are getting truculent about it. Perhaps you should try reading my post again, carefully, and you might finally get the point.

If as you now appear to be saying, you didn’t mean “natural” when you said “natural” and you did not mean “flavors” or “flavorings” when you said “flavors”, perhaps you should take a deep breath, find a dictionary or something similar, and figure out what you did mean, and what the proper words for it are. As it stands, the only possible answers to your question are either “No, foods cannot be made entirely of flavors, natural or otherwise,” or (on a more unconventional, but not absurd interpretation of “flavor”) “Yes, foods can be made entirely of natural flavors, and many (including your example of a cake) are (indeed, maybe they all are, on a sufficiently liberal interpretation of ‘natural’)”. Take your pick. It all depends on what the hell you think “natural flavor”, or maybe just “flavor”, means, something you still seem very confused about, though you are not prepared to admit it. You need to understand that being a “flavor” or a “flavoring” is not a property a substance has intrinsically, it is a property it only has in virtue of being used to give flavor to something. Vanilla pods are commonly used for flavoring, but if I am using one to prop the door open, it is not being a flavor or flavoring right now.

If you are asking whether substances such as those listed at the link given by Construct (i.e., substances that the FDA permits to used as, and listed as, “natural flavors”) can be eaten (either singly, or mixed with one another, but not mixed with anything not on the list) in more than the tiny quantities in which they are normally used for flavoring other foods (i.e., if you used things normally only used as flavorings as though they were foods in their own right), the answer is probably “Yes, you could eat it, but it would almost certainly taste horrible, provide little if any nutritive value, and would quite likely make you ill.” Whether you count that as “being a food” is, again, up to you and your interpretation of those words.

FWIW, OP, I understood perfectly what you are asking, and there are several obtuse dipshits in this thread.

I don’t have any insights, but Ornery Bob had a great answer. What does a mouthful of isoamyl acetate taste/feel like, though? What’s the LD of isoamyl acetate, would a mouthful kill us?

This is exactly what I had in mind. Thanks!

Seems like there’s a lot you could do, even if it would taste terrible, since I imagine a lot of those compounds would have the clay-like properties you mention.

Thank You. I was at the point where I wondered if I had taken crazy pills at some point.

Good questions! I’m sure it would taste terrible, but if you could magically deaden your tastebuds, I do wonder if you could get similar textures through some unconventional uses of these additives.

Well, yes. Isn’t that pretty obvious? What else could the distinction be?

I’ve used the stuff in the lab.

It’s not a powder, it’s a pungent, slightly “oily” liquid, much like a lot of organic chemicals. Smells like bananas - or, to be more accurate, like banana flavour sweets.

The LD[sub]50[/sub] in rats is about 16g per kg, so it’s pretty nontoxic. However it is classed as an irritant to mucous membranes, so swallowing it wouldn’t be too pleasant, I imagine.

http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9927549

Yes someone can physically do it, but can someone legally sell that as food with a label that only says “natural or artificial flavorings”? To that I am doubtful. At this point, I believe the ingredients can no longer be classified as natural or artificial flavorings because they are no longer additives.

Although the chemicals are sourced diferently, apparently the flavors in both natural and artificial flavors are built up “from scratch” in the same way.

I think most of us in the general public imagine that natural ( for example) cherry flavor is derived from cherries, and only cherries, but apparently that is not necessarily so.

Again, I am referring to things I read in “Fast Food Nation” a few years ago, and I am no expert in food sciences.

Moderator Note

You’ve been around long enough to know that personal insults aren’t allowed in GQ. No warning issued, but don’t do this again.

Jellohas got to be pretty close to what you’re talking about.

Most pure flavours would be toxic in large doses. They need to be diluted in a matrix of water, protein and carbohydrates. It is the dose that makes the poison to paraphrase Paracelcus.

Any examples come to mind? I have a feeling nobody is slipping strychnine into my food as a flavoring.

Sure just one example will do fine… one of the safest natural flavours would be banana oil.

The authorities do improbable research , such as determining the lethal dose in humans, so that they don’t get accused of “just guessing” or “making stuff up”.

Banana flavor, Isoamyl acetate, is Lethal at 10,000 ppm … see CDC - Immediately Dangerous to Life or Health Concentrations (IDLH): Isoamyl acetate - NIOSH Publications and Products

So if you are 120 lb or 60kg, then if you drunk say, a 2 lb of pure banana flavour ( Isoamyl acetate )… it could be lethal… Sure rather hard to consume so much of it, but if you did…
First example I picked…

There’s two separate questions that you might be asking here.

One is a) could you make something edible that you could legally on the box list only natural flavorings as an ingredient and the answer is no because natural flavorings are required to be used “in the minimum quantity required to produce their intended physical or technical effect” which they’re not.

The other is b) Could you take ingredients that have been listed on other packaged foods as natural flavorings and make something edible out of that.

I looked at the FDA list above and the closest I could come up with, using just those ingredients would be probably an aloe drink flavored with lemon verbena. Most of the rest of the ingredients on that list are leaves and barks and the such that would need to be paired with real ingredients to succeed.

But my reading of the FDA stature seems to suggest a much looser definition “the essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis, which contains the flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof, whose significant function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional.” seems to suggest that manufacturers actually have a great deal of discretion over how things are labeled. For example, it seems like a gum manufacturer would have the choice of labelling their ingredient “peppermint oil” or “natural flavoring” on the package, with most manufacturers preferring the former as it’s more informative.

By the FDA definition, I suppose technically something like whiskey could be labelled a natural flavoring if it were added for the sole purpose of contributing flavor, which would make a glass of whiskey a 100% “natural flavoring” beverage.

A bottle of Braggs Liquid Amino Acids has listed as it’s ingredients “Vegetable Protein from Soybeans and Purified Water” but I bet they could legally list their ingredients as “Natural Flavorings, Water” if they wanted to.

No, it isn’t.

Mercotans obviously do not count as “normal persons,” of course, in the context of this, or any other discussion.

I have always wondered by artificial flavors are only created to duplicate flavors that exist in nature. Why not create some whole new previously-unknown flavors that people might like? Simply because they would have no evocative names, and would therefore be harder to sell?

Isn’t “bubble gum flavor” the typical example used of an artificial flavor?

I think bubble gum was originally given a compex of natural flavors (as were all gums), and a product now that matches the original flavors of bubble gum (and color) would still be a blend of those flavors. Early gums were always flavored with spearmint, cinnamon, licorice, beecyh-nut, or something natural, or later on, an artificial flavor that matched one of the natural ones.

At the risk of being called an obtuse dipshit again, I will point out that the truly massive flavorings industry creates hundreds of completely new flavors every year. Many of them are what is called “fantasia” flavors - blends and new tastes that have no equivalent in natural foods. Cola and Dr Pepper are examples of fantasia flavorings - nothing else tastes like them, and they taste like nothing found naturally on earth.

Most flavors created by flavoring labs are not specifically created to taste like berry or cherry or apple or whatever - they are highly engineered compounds that hit the tastebuds in a particular way, can withstand blending and cooking, and end up adding some pleasing note to food. The very same flavor agent can be used to create “grape” soda, “berry” pie filling, “cherry” candy and a wholly proprietary ice cream flavor. It’s all in the proportions, companion flavorings and components, and taster expectations. If you’re told it’s berry, it tastes like berry. If you’re told it’s cherry, guess what. Mmm, completely “natural” grape soda.

The idea that there are only 20 different flavors in the industry and that each has thousands of clones is pretty obtuse, as is thinking that they are all copies of naturally-occurring flavors. The industry long, long ago perfected its range of ordinary flavors - any house in the game will sell you a perfect cherry flavoring at any price point, quality level and degree of natural/artificial desired. The goal now is to create flavors that are unique, that can be marketed at the highest prices to food makers who will pay that premium to get something consumers fight over in the aisles. Far more goods are flavored with these specially-blended, looking-for-an-edge compounds than any old-school berry or vanilla or chocolate flavorings.

But feel free to reject this obtuse interjection and continue wondering what the food label designations really, really, like, mean.