We Refuse to Touch "Natural Flavours." Here's What We Use Instead.

As a juice company, we understood what fruit juice concentrate was early on. Martin used to get acid burp walking down to the bus stop from drinking the stuff, and we once saw a 200-litre drum of it sitting on the hot bitumen for a couple of days because the brewery it was headed to was shut and couldn't receive it. Apparently it was still fine. Not great, but at least we knew what it was — juice, cooked down until the water's gone.

But then what's with this "natural flavour" business? If it's watermelon flavour, why wouldn't you just use watermelon? Who's out there mixing natural flavours into their fresh juice at home? How do you even grow a natural flavour?

That's the point. You don't. You can't grow it — you have to source it from a lab. Now we're very skeptical.

Turns out it doesn't even come from Australia. Usually a big flavour house in Switzerland. Strange, hey?

We're obsessive label-readers, always have been. Dustin used to spend entire days in health food shops reading ingredient panels. Martin did the same thing up and down the aisles of his local independent supermarket. Different shops, same obsession.

But natural flavours — we just didn't understand it, so of course we thought we'd better taste it. We opened a bottle of some pineapple-flavoured beverage and the aroma nearly knocked us over. Far out, it was strong — how did they afford to use 100% whole pineapples in this one? We knew how much that cost!

Then there was the peach. That's when we immediately knew it wasn't the real thing — it was either too weak, too strong, out of balance, or carried this odd lingering aftertaste real fruit doesn't have. Peach is the worst offender, which tracks, because we know real peach is brutal to juice. It's genuinely good at breaking all of our juice machines and leaving us with a hefty bill from the local mechanic. So how does a lab get "natural peach flavour" so clean and consistent? That tells you how far it actually is from a real peach.

And here's the part that gets us: "natural flavour" doesn't mean the flavour resembles the fruit, and it doesn't mean it's mostly fruit. It just means it started out as something natural once — before it was extracted, concentrated, and rebuilt into whatever's in your can. Just a dash is all you need!

We get it — it must be so easy to use. No waiting for it to be in season, no dealing with hard to understand fruit growers, and no broken juice machines. But hey, when has something that good ever come easy? That tells you everything you need to know.

That's why we only ever use unpasteurised and not-from-concentrate and not-from-natural-flavours juice. Real fruit, pressed with a heck of a lot of effort gone into it!