corn puffs and "natural butter flavor"

Sometimes I stay up very late to finish something that I've already wasted/spent so much time on today, that I really don't want to have to waste/spend time on it tomorrow too. Maybe this way, tomorrow I'll get around to doing what I really wanted to do today.

I did at least get some things accomplished today which I had planned on, namely raking the yard.

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These are the good-tasting corn puffs (Mikesell's "Puffcorn Delites") I found recently at Big Lots (but they only had this one bag left), which have no added flavoring:




Here is another brand, Simple Truth Organic "Sea Salt & Butter Flavored Baked Puffs", which I found recently at Kroger. Note that the front of the package says "Vegan" even though it also has "Butter" in the name.




I was confused by the "natural butter flavor" ingredient. I thought that meant "flavor derived from butter". So how could the product be vegan? Because of that uncertainty, I only took the photo of it while in the store, and did not buy it.

So today I spent some (a lot) of time trying to find out what "natural butter flavor" is, and can it be vegan? Also, how is it different from the "artificial butter flavor" which another brand of corn puffs used to include and which had previously been implicated in causing lung disease (mostly in workers in microwave popcorn plants, but there was also at least one case of someone who ate a lot of microwave popcorn who got it)?

Short answer: Yes, apparently both artificial and natural butter flavor can be vegan. I'm still not sure if they are always vegan though, or if in some cases they also extract a flavoring from butter and call it "butter flavor".

Both artificial and natural butter flavors are basically the same chemicals; the difference is only in how they are produced; from what source and through what process. Either can be one of several different chemicals.

Diacetyl (butane-2,3-dione) has been voluntarily phased out from most, if not all, microwave popcorn brands, but the FDA still allows its use. In popcorn, diacetyl seems to have been replaced by acetylpropionyl (2,3-pentanedione); however, the latter appears to have the same dangers as diacetyl. (Other pages I read suggested that it may not be the specific chemicals themselves which are the problem, but rather that inhaling any particulate matter like that can be dangerous.)

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Microwaving prepacked microwave popcorn results in the production of a number of volatile organic compounds and particulate matter (abstract, 2007/01)

4 major popcorn makers to drop toxic chemical. Companies working to remove buttery flavoring linked to lung disease (2007/09/05)


Chemtura Resolves Butter Flavor Cases (2010/08/30)

Respiratory Disease Among Flavoring-exposed Workers in Food and Flavoring Manufacture (abstract, 2012/07)

The diacetyl substitute, 2,3-pentanedione, has comparable toxicity to diacetyl, and other members of the a-diketone family have not been evaluated for respiratory toxicity.

Update on flavoring-induced lung disease (abstract, 2016/01)

Attempts to decrease the risk of lung disease have included the use of flavoring substitutes; however, these chemicals may cause similar injury ... Diacetyl substitutes cause similar peri-bronchiolar fibrotic lesions in animal studies.

Is Microwave Popcorn Bad For You? Cancer & Butter Flavor Risks (2017/11/06)

If diacetyl has been mostly phased out, what’s the new “butter flavor” made of and is it safe?

That brings us to the next concerning compound…
4. The “butter flavor” acetylpropionyl

You won’t even know whether popcorn is made with this. FDA labeling regulations don’t require specific flavors to be identified by name.

Since it’s possible to find acetylpropionyl and diacetyl in nature, manufacturers can list both of these chemicals as "natural butter flavor" or simply "natural flavoring."
They don’t even need to use the word artificial. Even USDA certified organic microwave popcorn can use them.
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Technically known as 2,3-pentanedione, acetylpropionyl is molecularly very similar to butane-2,3-dione (diacetyl).
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Toxicity reports on acetylpropionyl were not even published until 2010. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) says in a peer-reviewed paper that:
"…acute inhalation exposures to 2,3-pentanedione cause airway epithelial damage that is similar to diacetyl in laboratory studies (Hubbs et al. 2012)."

On "Natural Butter Flavors" (a blog post)

Artificial butter flavoring (Wikipedia article)
Obviously, I'm not the only one who assumes that "natural butter flavor" means something that is derived from butter.
This article says: "Butter flavor" redirects here. For natural butter flavor, see [the article on] butter.

Artificial butter flavoring may contain diacetyl, acetylpropionyl, or acetoin, three natural compounds in butter that contribute to its characteristic flavor.

The Flavor Rundown: Natural vs. Artificial Flavors

The FDA broadly defines natural flavors to include any flavor isolated from natural sources like plant material (fruits, roots, bark, herbs, etc.) or animal products (meat, dairy, etc.). Artificial flavors are any flavors that are not defined as natural, even if they have the exact same chemical composition as flavors isolated directly from nature.

...these flavor additives are generally produced through chemical synthesis or industrial fermentation on specialized culture, which is optimized for flavor production, but is not the sort of media people generally like to eat. When produced through this culturing technique, diacetyl and acetoin are listed as "natural butter flavoring," but when they are produced through controlled laboratory synthesis, the very same components are listed as "artificial butter flavoring"

What is the difference between artificial and natural flavors?

Natural and artificial flavors are defined for the consumer in the Code of Federal Regulations. A key line from this definition is the following: " a natural flavor is 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." Artificial flavors are those that are made from components that do not meet this definition.
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The flavorist creating an artificial flavoring must use the same chemicals in his formulation as would be used to make a natural flavoring, however. Otherwise, the flavoring will not have the desired flavor. The distinction in flavorings--natural versus artificial--comes from the source of these identical chemicals
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Another difference between natural and artificial flavorings is cost. The search for "natural" sources of chemicals often requires that a manufacturer go to great lengths to obtain a given chemical. Natural coconut flavorings, for example, depend on a chemical called massoya lactone. Massoya lactone comes from the bark of the Massoya tree, which grows in Malaysia.

But then why do some German artificial flavors taste different from the corresponding American ones, like Raspberry for example? And why do some artificial flavors not taste the same as the actual food they are based on? I suppose it is because the food includes many chemicals and flavors, while the artificial ones are subsets of those flavors.

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2018/12/27 2pm: Edited to add more info to the "Short Answer".