Eating is a conscious experience. It involves all our senses. The complicated machinery given to us to understand and fully experience and enjoy the process of eating. Somehow we have given some part of it away to food companies that we blindly trust. Conscious eating is the key for questioning what we are fed with and gaining back the control to receive what we and our bodies truly enjoy.

Is our understanding of Natural and Synthetic changing? What do we expect from natural ingredients? Is it a romantic view of beautiful garden where the ingredients are sourced? What do we consider to be natural and what synthetic in what we consume today? The line is blurry. Synthetic refers to engineered by humans and Natural refer to sourced from plant or animal. But today even our vegetables, fruits and meat can be considered human engineered.

Color, flavor- aroma, ingredients that we can find listed on our food products as natural or artificial. But how much is it the ingredient instead of a word in marketing to create an image in our brain? When we read natural flavor, we imagine freshly squeezed orange juice, when we read natural colorants we imagine beetroot extract for example. But we have developed our food systems long ago to work in lab and create these ingredients in molecular level.

Every food consists of molecules,- aroma, color, .. Understanding how these work is a key player to find better, cheaper and faster results. There are about 1000 000 flavor molecules that in different combinations create different flavor sensations. Each of the molecules can be extracted from nature, but can also be made in lab using petrochemicals and industrial chemistry. When we hear chemistry and chemicals in relation to food we want to stay away from it, but the truth is, all our food is made out of chemical compounds. Humans have just found a way how to copy the exact molecules in labs.

The point is, the result most of the time is exactly the same. Not just taste-wise, but also on a molecular level. It is the same molecule, but what the “natural” and “synthetic” refers to, is the process of getting there.

We might get confused as we have to wonder between natural ingredients, natural processes or natural appearance. Would you consider these fruits to be natural or artificial? If it is made from natural ingredients, its been made using natural processes and might look natural? But if all these steps are human manipulated is it artificial? Synthetic? What is our own line between these two, how blurry is the line. If I lable the same fruit with Natural and Sythetic, how does it change your perspective on it? Is it me telling you what I like you to see or do you decide on your own by experiencing it?
Our senses are our tools to detect what is good for you. But we trust this decision for big companies to make for us and they see ways around this one simple word- NATURAL.  I want you to question your own knowledge and gut feeling. While eating this fruit” think what makes it natural and what makes it synthetic for you. The same with a drink or food in supermarket, question if the listed natural ingredient makes up for the rest of the synthetic drink or accept and enjoy the mystery of unknown tastes.