Transparency In Food Labeling

Why do companies hide animal ingredients under natural flavor label on products?

They don’t want other companies copying their product; they need some secret ingredients. Otherwise someone else will sell the same product.

Look, cooks and chefs do something similar when sharing a recipe. They write down the ingredients without the amounts. Then the person replicating it is on their own to figure out how much of this or that should they use of each ingredient. 

I used to wonder why Tony Bourdain would say he tried to make a particular dish his whole life but just couldn’t do it like some others did it. He just never got it right. Well, that’s why, because the original recipe was nothing more than a shopping list.

I say why put cooks and chefs through that. Give the recipe with the ingredients and amounts and the method, the whole thing. I know you can’t have measuring utensils in restaurant kitchens (for all the right reasons of causing chaos and too much time to locate one when you need it etc.), but why take away the amounts of each ingredient and the order in which you apply it?

The cooks and chefs are already eyeballing amounts, except when they’re large and then everybody seems to have access to a big scoop. If you want consistency in your restaurant among cooking/prep staff, then list ingredients with amounts.

To get back to the labeling on product, if you want to sell your product to the public you had better start listing every ingredient on the label that is contained in that product. The public deserves it. And they will eventually demand it. By then you may have lost your business because you weren’t honest. When somebody gets sick, they deserve to know every item in the product that they just ate. And people get sick a lot from restaurants and buying prepared foods.

If you’re still afraid that someone will replicate your product, they’ll do it anyway if they are so inclined, but think on this: If I give a detailed recipe the same to twelve cooks, each recipe will come out different. It’s human nature to want to alter what you cook when given a recipe. So stop over-worrying and state your labels correctly. That is if you want to keep selling your product. 

In future realize that when people stop buying your product it isn’t because you told the truth on the label; they just didn’t like the product or they tired of it.

If your purpose all along was to fool people who don’t eat animals into thinking the product had none when it did, then you open yourself up to liability.

Now to the animal ingredient being hidden under the label. Truth be told most cooks can’t make anything taste good unless they add some part of animal to it. That’s just the way it is. Like Julia Child adding butter to everything. Put some cooked bone broth concentrate, fish oils, ground up gut smear or digestion in a product and everybody loves it, according to those who make it.

Well times have changed and what you once did is no longer acceptable to the folks in the more advanced cultures who find those additions to any product repulsive. The wealthier nations that you want as customers don’t let you decide what they’re going to eat unbeknownst to them. They like transparency in their food products. So get with it and tell the truth of your shame.

If it still sells, then that’s on them. You were honest about your product. And please don’t ever think that eggs, milk and honey do not come from animals. Label your product Animal, Contains No Animal, or Contains Animal.

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