So a about a week ago I saw a tumblr post going around about Fanta in various Eurpean countries, and how different it is from the United States. I'm sure many of us have seen the photo of how Fanta looks in the U.K., but I've shared it again here for the sheer hilarity of it.
The discussion on that post mentioned how much juice is in each country's variation of the soda. I jokingly replied, "...I would be astonished if American Fanta has any real fruit in it at all." This joke of mine did in fact send me on an internet goose chase of finding out if my assumption had any truth to it.
To start I went and looked for the ingredient list of Fanta in the U.S. and found the coca-cola website with the official listed ingredients.
https://www.coca-cola.com/xf/en/brands/fanta#accordion-621b4ef950-item-92d0e1ea03
"Ingredients
Carbonated Water, Sugar, Acidifier: Citric Acid, Natural Orange Flavors, Preservative: Potassium Sorbate, Vitamin C, Color: Sunset Yellow*, Antioxidant: Calcium Disodium(EDTA).*This material may have a negative effect on activity and concentration in Children."
I pulled this list right off the coca-cola website and I've put the link above. Right away we see that there is no juice listed anywhere, only a mysterious and vague "Natural Orange Flavors" ingredient. Which begs the question, what the fuck are "Natural Flavors?"
I went to a few different websites on my hunt to define this term that I've seen all over ingredients labels on various goods in the store. My first stop was an article about the difference between U.S. Fanta and U.K. Fanta. In this article I found some of the listed ingredients for the U.K. version. I'll use the following quote from the article as well as link the article itself.
https://www.today.com/food/trends/fanta-color-difference-us-vs-europe-rcna105799
"But, according to the ingredients in Fanta Orange, which is sold in England, there’s an ingredient not used in the American version: orange juice. With carbonated water and sugar being the soda’s other top ingredients, U.K. Fanta includes orange juice from concentrate (3.7%), citrus fruit from concentrate (1.3%), citric acid, carrot and pumpkin vegetable extracts, sweeteners, preservatives, natural orange flavorings and other natural flavorings in addition to other ingredients."
We already learned that U.S. Fanta doesn't have any orange juice, but this does confirm that whatever "Natural Flavors" are, they aren't juice. It also raised some questions about what the hell is going on with U.K. Fanta. Why is there carrot and pumpkin in there? What are y'all doing? Those questions can be answered on another post though. Today, we have a mission.
So far we haven't really found what "Natural Flavors" means, only what it doesn't mean. So I kept looking and came across another article, this one solely about Natural Flavors.
https://www.eatingwell.com/what-are-natural-flavors-8605395#toc-what-are-natural-flavors
The article gives a list of what Natural Flavors might be or might be drawn from, it isn't very clear. It follows that list with the statement, "The function of natural flavoring is simply for what it says—to flavor the product, not to add nutritional value." Followed by a quote from dietician Amy Goodson, "This is because they are used in very small quantities to enhance taste and aroma, and their calorie content is negligible.”
Reading through the article wasn't particularly helpful, it was overall very vague and did not really accomplish its goal of telling me what Natural Flavors actually are, only what they could, maybe, possibly be. Not satisfied with this, I kept looking. I eventually found another article and it proved much more fruitful (pun intended).
https://www.bhg.com/recipes/healthy/eating/what-is-natural-flavor/
The article features a breakdown of information given by Marie Wright, the Chief Global Flavorist of Archer Daniels Midland (ADM). The article gives a brilliant explanation of what "Natural Flavors" are in the following description:
"A strawberry soda, for example, has “strawberry essences in a strawberry flavor,” not fresh strawberry juice, says Wright. This is because fresh strawberry juice doesn’t have much shelf life. Also, adds Wright, the extract needs to be combined with other flavors (such as jasmine, vanilla, or raspberry) to make it intense enough to flavor a product. An aromatic component (usually in the form of an extract like vanilla) gets diluted (with oils, water, etc.) before going into your soda, yogurt, fruit snack, or whatever it may be."
I loved this breakdown, it suddenly made all the pieces click. Essentially Natural Flavors are just the idea or essence of a naturally occurring flavor, then added to food to enhance what the expected flavor is supposed to be.
I had a fun time finding all this information and reading through the above articles. I now have new fun facts and trivia to inflict upon all my friends and hopefully you do too now. Though, I'm still not sure I'm ready to dive into why U.K. Fanta has carrot and pumpkin in it.