When a fruit (flavored) beverage says it contains all natural flavors but no juice, where is the flavor coming from? Is it possible there are man-made additives being thrown in that can be technically considered "natural"?
What are the ‘natural flavors’ in a fruit drink that contains no juice
food-safety
Best Answer
Ok... I'm going to ruin your day with this. In orange juice for instance, the process of homaginization and storage kills the flavor of orange juice, so the industry has enlisted the help of the perfume industry to help them. Each orange juice company has basically a perfume of orange flavors that it uses from the peels and rinds and biproducts that it uses to try to recreate the taste of real orange juice... It's why every orange juice brand tastes slightly different even though they are all "fresh squeezed" (btw, they are technically fresh squeezed, they're just then stored :))
If you google "orange juice flavor packs" you can see what this is talking about. The flavor packs are incidentally made out of parts of the orange, so the fda has no problem with them (sadly).
http://consumerist.com/2011/07/oj-flavor-packs.html
So to directly answer your question, you can flavor something with fruit derived perfume and call it "natural flavors"
Here's a quote from the site: