Nasty "Natural Flavours"

I never really knew what was meant by "natural flavours" when shown on a packaged food item. "Surely it means that the strawberry or other flavour is from a natural source, like a strawberry?"

Yeah, um, no, not so much.

Thanks to a post from Tanya Alekseeva at Better Raw on Facebook, I found out some pretty disgusting news about certain "natural flavours".

Yes, they are natural. Natural from a beaver. (Not all, but at least some.)

See, they take the castoreum, the excretion that makes the scent when the beavers mark their territory, and use it to make vanilla, strawberry and raspberry "natural flavours".

Of course, it's not listed as such on packages. When your package says, "natural flavours", it could really mean anything. Only way to know for sure would be to contact the company and find out just what is in their natural flavours--but they're not required to tell you. And if you're vegan, it's clear that some of these "natural flavours" will be problematic.

Since this kind of thing is in processed foods, avoiding such "food" in the first place is probably the best thing you could do!

 

While you're at it, you might consider having a look at fragrance products you use. Chanel Cuir de Russie, for example, is but one perfume that uses castoreum!

Pay Attention to Labels

I was doing just fine this morning with orange juice, 1/2 of a banana, lots of water (I really wasn't hungry this morning), then had the Caesar salad I mentioned in my previous post. Felt great. I decided to have a gluten-free blueberry muffin I bought from Superstore yesterday. I had had one last night and noticed it was quite sweet. Tasted more like cake than a muffin. I still had one after my lunch today. It's a muffin, right?

It didn't take long for my energy levels to drop. I would really like a nap right now, to be honest, and yet I felt fine not more than 20 minutes ago. Before I had the so-called muffin. I had looked at the label at the store but only to see if there was any milk in it. I looked at the label today after my sugar low to see just what's in this stuff. First ingredient? Sugar. GAH. And now I have the all-too-familiar "sugar headache" starting up. I don't recall having had one last night, but my food intake this morning, being "purer", if you will than what I had for supper last night, the sugar content went straight to me. Time for more water to help flush it out.

Scanning labels for forbidden ingredients isn't enough! Must pay attention to all ingredients!

Do you have a story of a time you bought something without properly reading a label?