"Natural Flavor": What It Really Means, From a Mom Who Had to Know

By Chloe, Founder of Jiggl and Certified Health Coach (IIN)

I didn't set out to learn food chemistry. I set out to find something my daughter would eat when she was sick or worn out.

Gelatin was the obvious answer. It's gentle, it's easy to eat, and it's one of those foods kids will usually say "yes" to when nothing else sounds good. But when I looked at the packaged gelatin snacks on the shelf, I couldn't get behind them. They were loaded with sugar, artificial colors, and preservatives, and that wasn't what I wanted to hand my kid.

So I did what any (clean food motivated) determined mom would do: I went home and made my own. Fruit juice and plain gelatin powder. Simple, clean, and exactly what I felt good about.

Best laid plans and all that, she didn't like it nearly as much as the packaged stuff.

This didn't shock me. My experience as a mom was that even though it was what I considered "healthier" and I thought I had the "clean" part figured out, I'd forgotten the part that actually gets a kid to eat something: flavor. (she always prefers Goldfish brand crackers over the Organic brands too. sigh)

The Idea That Came From a Highway

A few weeks later, I was driving down a highway in Salt Lake City, still turning the problem over in my head, when I passed a local company that makes natural flavors. Something clicked. What if I could recreate that fun, flavorful gelatin experience without giving up on "natural" ingredients?

I worked with a food scientist, and after a lot of testing, we landed on what we now eat (and sell) as Jiggl.

The Question I Keep Getting

Recently, someone asked me a fair question: "How can a flavor made in a lab be called natural?"

It's a great question, and I didn't want to answer it with a guess. So I took it straight to our food scientist. Here's what I learned, explained the way I wish someone had explained it to me.

1. Everything we eat is made of chemicals. That sounds like a gotcha, but it's just science. A single strawberry contains hundreds of naturally occurring compounds that together create its taste and smell. "Chemical" doesn't mean "artificial." It means "stuff that exists."

2. Natural flavor companies work with those compounds. Instead of using a whole strawberry, flavor scientists isolate, concentrate, and combine the flavor compounds that come from natural sources. Think of it like making coffee: you're pulling flavor out of a natural source through a process (extraction, distillation, heating, or enzymatic processing). Nobody calls coffee artificial because it took a process to make it.

3. "Natural" has a legal definition. In the U.S., the FDA defines natural flavors in regulation (21 CFR 101.22). The flavor has to come from a qualifying natural source, such as a plant or an animal product, and the allowed processes are spelled out. Flavoring ingredients also have to meet food safety requirements, either through FDA authorization or through the "Generally Recognized as Safe" (GRAS) standard, which requires scientific support that an ingredient is safe for how it's used.

One honest caveat: that doesn't mean the FDA individually approves every single flavor. It means there's an established framework behind them.

Where the Critics Have a Point

I don't think everyone who's skeptical of the term "natural flavors" is wrong, and I'd rather say that out loud than pretend otherwise.

One real frustration is transparency. A label that says "natural flavors" doesn't tell you what's inside the flavor. That's a legitimate thing to want to know more about, and I fully support ingredient transparency. If you ever have questions about what goes into Jiggl, I want you to ask. Feel free to reach out to me at: hello@eatjiggl.com

Where I part ways with the criticism is the idea that "natural flavors" is automatically a red flag. Safety comes down to the actual substance, how pure it is, and how much of it you consume. It doesn't come down to how complicated the chemistry sounds.

Why This Matters for Jiggl

Here's the part that brought it all back to my kitchen. And matters a lot to my food scientist who also cares a lot about "clean eating":

When you take out the sugar overload, the artificial dyes, and the other ingredients many of us are trying to avoid, you still have to make food taste good. If you don't, people (um, my kid) won't eat it, no matter how clean the label is. I learned that firsthand when my daughter turned up her nose at my homemade version.

Natural flavors are what let us make something fun and delicious without relying on piles of sugar to make it palatable. Our color is natural, too: Jiggl's red comes from red carrot and radish! (this makes me think of the colorful eggs you can dye on easter using veggies!)

For me, the goal has never been "perfect." It's better: better ingredients, honest labels, and food that people (including picky kids) actually enjoy.

A Quick Note

I'm a Certified Health Coach and a food founder, not a doctor or a registered dietitian. If you or a family member has allergies, sensitivities, or a medical condition, please talk with your healthcare provider about what's right for you.