The evils of Natural Flavors

I hate those two stupid little words. "Natural. Flavors." A new vegan's worst nightmare.

It's the company's sneaky way of not telling you what's in their product. For all I know, beef bullion is Captain Crunch's secret ingredient. But since it's part of what gives it that unique flavor, it gets stuck under "natural flavors" and I can never be certain.

Unless I call them. And ask. And then I have to argue with customer satisfaction representative after customer satisfaction representative, assuring them that I am not in fact trying to steal away the secret recipe, but just want to make sure it's safe for consumption. Half the time I won't get anything out of them. Why is it so hard to assure somebody that it doesn't have any animal products in it?

They could overpass this whole disaster by just assuring us that it has no animal products according to the unvegan list. OR they could be EXTRA awesome and actually print it at the bottom, under the ingredients list, after the WARNING: MAY CONTAIN SOY OR PEANUTS. Just one little word. VEGAN. Or if they want to look good, VEGAN FRIENDLY.

It doesn't have to be in big words. Just a tiny little word after the list of ingredients. It would make my world twice as awesome.

Unfortunately that's something you don't see anywhere but in natural grocery stores and the like. And let me tell you, I once paid four dollars for a can of pineapples at one of those places. They are FREAKING EXPENSIVE! A jar of vegan mayonnaise can cost you upwards of SIX DOLLARS!!! HOW am I supposed to get my veganaise fix at those prices!?

Ergh. I yearn for a more vegan friendly world. I mean, come on. We're low fat and fat and sugar free friendly, but not VEGAN friendly? Companies are aware of being green and looking out for transfat, but can't be made to care about vegans? It's not hard check your recipe and type out either CONTAINS ANIMAL PRODUCT or VEGAN FRIENDLY.

That's EASY!