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FOOD BABE TV: Do You Eat Beaver Butt?

Beaver Butt

I am very excited to announce the launch of Food Babe TV. This is something I have been working on for a very long time. I want to change the way everyone thinks about their food together with you and in a very visual, fun and impactful way. I hope you enjoy the first episode below and share it with your friends and family. I’m counting on you to spread the word and tell everyone what’s really in our food – let’s change the world together!

Watch: Do You Eat Beaver Butt?

Natural Flavors 101

Castoreum (or beaver butt) is just one of the ingredients that could be called a “natural flavor.” But there are many other things called “natural flavors” that could be lurking in your food. We’ll never know what they are because the food companies won’t tell us as they consider this information proprietary.

According to the FDA, natural flavors can include:

“the essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis, which contains the flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof, whose significant function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional” (21CFR101.22).

That means, the food industry can use virtually anything found in nature (including genetically engineered fruits, vegetables, meat and hidden forms of MSG derived from yeast) and label it as “natural flavors”. These flavors create a false sense of reality while you are eating and give off the illusion of real food. The flavors work against you, getting you addicted to processed food using the best part of a taste or even smell. (Who are these flavor chemists? You can learn more about them here.)

They don’t want you to have the full essence of the strawberry – they want you to only experience the best 1 millionth part of the taste – so you get “addicted” and keep having to go back for more and more, searching continuously for gratification – eating more of that product which in turns fills Big Food Companies pockets. The Big Food Companies are “hijacking” your taste buds one by one and the FDA couldn’t care less, because they allow these companies to get away with it.

Most of us know artificial flavors derived from petroleum and crude oil aren’t good for us, but the ingredient “natural flavor” can fool the best of us. Natural flavor can legally contain natural occurring “glutamate” bi-products like MSG – which are known excitotoxins. These excitotoxins are some of the chemicals that cause your taste buds to experience irresistibility when it comes to food. Ever wonder why you can’t just eat one chip? Or one cookie? Or why you remember a taste of a product so distinctly and crave it uncontrollably? Natural flavors can be to blame.

A lot of people think you shouldn’t blame these food companies, flavor chemists, or anyone else for people’s inability to stop eating and from getting obese – but when companies practice this type of trickery – you can’t help but realize we are all at a disadvantage. How much do you have to research and know about your food in order to trust it?  Can we expect all people in all income levels to have the time to find and understand this knowledge? Shouldn’t we be able to trust the mustard or the oatmeal the grocery store down the street is selling to us? It’s amazing we can’t trust something labeled “natural flavor” – it sounds so simple, friendly and well natural… but really can be so misleading.

What Can You Do About Natural Flavors?

Humans were meant to eat real food – not fake industrial food created in a laboratory and that’s why I recommend not buying food with the ingredient “natural flavor” on the label. Who wants to be tricked or lured into thinking a food tastes better or smells better than it should or eating beaver butt for goodness sake!?

If you find a product in your pantry or fridge that has “natural flavors” in it – take it back to the store and get your money back. But before you take it back, come on over to my facebook page and post a picture of that product, so we can all learn and identify where natural flavors or beaver butt may be hiding.

Wishing you the greatest health imaginable.

Food Babe

P.S. We all need to know what’s in our food. Let’s save #beaverbutt together. Don’t forget to share this information with your friends and family, by hitting one of the social media buttons below or using “share this” to send them an email.

***No beavers were harmed in the making of this film***

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238 responses to “FOOD BABE TV: Do You Eat Beaver Butt?

  1. Why not eat beavers butt? We eat everything else off of every single other animal. Sounds like a real treat!!! Still sounds gross though. The government really should add the real nutrition facts!!

    1. Nose to tail !!! This lady needs to get over her self ! BTW it’s not actually the butt its a gland that produces a liquid used as vanilla flavouring ! If your going to kill an animal you might as well use every bit of it !!

      1. But harvesting the castoreum is the only reason WHY they’re being slaughtered in the first place –

  2. My daughter said today: Mom I looked everywhere in the house for food with natural flavors in it and I did not find any..AWESOME! We have a healthy pantry 🙂 She watched your video about beavers butt and natural flavors lol

  3. Just relax. In reality Castoreum is used rarely. About 300 pound per year is consumed, as oppose to the more easily obtainable, cheaper Vanillin (2.6 MILLION consumed annually).
    Chances are if you find your food that says “natural flavoring”, it’ll be from vanillin instead of castoreum.

    1. The trouble, DAJW, is that some of us are unwilling to place our health in the hands of “likely”, “rarely”, and “chances are”. Respectfully, I have to say to you that “chances are” is not fact, it isn’t science, and it isn’t (as you claim) reality. If all were as innocuous as you believe it to be, then why would labeling be an issue? If you have nothing to hide, then transparency is an advertising plus! Nebulous catch-all terminology (like “Spices” or “Natural Flavors”) is shadowed verbiage concocted by money-driven lobbies. I would ask you where you get your information of “300 pound per year [of castoreum] is consumed”. Consumed per person? Consumed by the U.S.? Consumed world-wide? And your citing of Vanillin as being used more often is also purposefully vague. Not every product wants to be vanilla-flavored. So is your claim in reference to specific processed foods or all? We are discussing science here, not likelihood. Good luck relaxing with that. : )

      1. Do your own research & you’ll find that the use of castoreum has drastically declined.

  4. This was such a cute video – and disgustingly shocking! Many thanks to you, Vani, for your dedication to helping bring back REAL FOOD. To those people who say, “If processed foods and FDA-approved chemicals were really so harmful, people would be sick and dying in droves!”, I say, “EXACTLY.” Where Truth is exposed there will always be backlash, because some people prize money over morality. Don’t waste a precious moment on the ugly voices. They don’t realize you’re trying to save THEIR lives, too. Love and respect!

  5. OMG – I ‘m a Vegetarian and I’m eating meat Indirectly. I love Strawberry Flavored Oat meal , which is a Part of my Breakfast! Can’t believe that i’m eating traces of Beaver’s Butt! Yikes!

  6. To those of you saying using this is ok, because we should be using every part of an animal… since when was BEAVER a popular animal meat consumed in the United States? When was the last time you went to the grocery store and bought some ground beaver? Beaver steaks? NEVER. Her point is that we should demand to know what is in our food, and terms like “natural flavoring” should not be acceptable. Its too broad, and can mean too many different things.

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