Natural Flavor – probably isn’t what you think
When you see “natural flavor” on a package, what do you think? For example, think about a product with “natural chocolate” flavor. You’d probably assume that it’s got cocoa in it, or something in that family, right? Yes and no. It probably has some cocoa in it, but there’s other things it may have in there too – coffee beans, for example have many flavor notes that taste a lot like chocolate (some people add instant coffee to their brownies, during the baking process, to make them taste more rich).
The FDA regulations on “natural flavor” is that the flavor needs to occur in nature and/or be obtained by natural means. What are natural means? Any natural process that could occur without human interference. Fermentation is a good example of this, as is ageing, and many others. As an experiment, jump on Google and check out any form of alcohol (beer, wine, scotch, etc…) and see what flavor descriptions you can get for various drinks. You’ll find scotch that is described as having notes of peach, vanilla, and even apple. You’ll find stout beers (think Guinness) that are described as chocolatey, having notes of coffee, etc…these are all natural flavors. Of course there are more sources and methods for obtaining natural flavor, but you get the idea. Any flavor that you’ll find in nature, is a flavor that you’ll probably find in hundreds of places. Vanilla bean is the most potent example of that characteristic flavor known as “vanilla” but it appears throughout the natural world. Bubble gum, cake batter, cookie dough, etc…have yet to be found in nature and require a chemical sh*t storm of artificial flavorings to engineer. We’ve chosen to stick with only natural flavors in 3Fuel. There’s no flavor in our product that you couldn’t pick right out of the natural world as-is.
But natural flavors are just that – flavors – they don’t carry any sweetness or sweetening with them. Unfortunately, whey protein hydrolysate is very bitter (due to the hydrolyzation process). The higher the degree of hydrolyzation, the more bitter the protein becomes. The more bitter the protein, the more you need to rely on flavoring.
