The truth about how many chemicals are in everything we eat

The idea that there is a difference between "natural" chemicals, like those found in fruits and vegetables, and the synthetic version of those chemicals is just a bad way of looking at the world.

There are many chemicals in our food's natural flavors and colors. Some of them have long, scary-sounding names, too.

All foods — and everything else around us — are made up of chemicals, whether they occur in nature or are made in a lab. That means everything we smell or taste is a response to chemicals.

The characteristic smell of cloves, for example, comes from one chemical called eugenol.

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And cinnamon, which is just the dried inner-bark of specific trees, gets its aroma and flavor from the compound cinnamaldehyde.

Shutterstock/Stas Walenga

So, both artificial and natural flavors contain chemicals. The distinction between natural and artificial flavorings is the source of chemicals.

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