I am a food technologist and have worked in product development for the past 25 years. I have worked with ingredient companies and flavour houses developing flavours of various kinds.
Many of us may pick up a product that has "natural flavours" on the ingredient declaration or on the front of the packaging and think great, this product must be good for me. But there is a lot more to "natural flavours" than meets the eye... While food processors must list all the ingredients on a food label, flavour manufacturers do not have to disclose their ingredients. And "natural flavours" can contain between 20 and 30 different ingredients.
Just because natural flavours are derived from a natural plant or animal source does not necessarily mean that it is good for you. A chemical compound derived naturally or synthetically is still the same chemical compound. So, in many cases the ingredients that typically go into natural flavours are the same ingredients that go into artificial flavours. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying all natural flavours are bad, but what I am saying is that there is a list of ingredients within natural flavours and flavours that are not disclosed on the ingredient declaration.
The addition of natural flavours or flavours also makes the product taste like the real thing without the health benefits. So, the actual goodness of the real thing has been stripped away whilst mimicking the real thing. Many food products contain small amounts of the real thing for marketing purposes, and then add a "flavour" to plagiarise the taste.
So, there is "natural" and there is natural. Cress Valley does not use any natural flavours, artificial flavours or sweeteners. Our products are genuinely natural.