“Natural Flavour” turns up near the bottom of a lot of Australian baby food ingredient lists, and it does more work than two words should. Read every other line on the pack and you still won’t know what’s inside those two, because the Code lets most of what sits under them go unlisted. A few named substances are the exception, and so are allergens — that is where the line stops.
On Farex Apple & Oatmeal Baby Food Pouch, 6+ Months, 120g — as listed by Coles on 26 August 2026 — the panel reads Apple Puree (53%), Water, Cooked Oats (15%), Apple Juice, Oat Bran (3.0%), Natural Flavour, Cinnamon. Contains: Gluten. May Contain: Wheat. Two words sit sixth of seven: Natural Flavour.
A second Farex pouch, same size, same retailer, same day, runs the same two words in the opposite spot: Full Cream Milk (31%), Apple Juice (31%), Water, Cooked Oats (14%), Oat Bran (3.4%), Cinnamon, Natural Flavour. Contains: Gluten, Milk. May Contain: Wheat. That’s Farex Creamy Baby Porridge with Apple Juice, 6+ Months, 120g, also listed by Coles on 26 August 2026. Cinnamon and Natural Flavour have swapped places.
That swap is arithmetic, not styling. Standard 1.2.4 requires an ingredient list to run in descending order of ingoing weight. So the apple and oatmeal pouch holds at least as much Natural Flavour as cinnamon, and the porridge at least as much cinnamon as Natural Flavour. Equal weights can sit either way round, and the porridge panel opens on a pair of them: milk and apple juice, both 31%. Neither Farex panel puts a percentage on the flavouring itself.
The word the Code requires, and the word Farex added
A flavouring only has to carry one word. Standard 1.2.4 sets the floor at “flavouring” or “flavour”. A maker can instead use “a more specific name or description of the flavouring substance,” which is the option both Farex panels are exercising. Nothing in that clause asks for “natural”. Farex added the second word.
What the Code lets stay off the label entirely
Whatever sits inside a flavouring is mostly exempt from the ingredient list altogether. The same Standard says a statement of ingredients need not list an ingredient of a flavouring substance. Nine named substances are the exception, monosodium glutamate among them, and so is caffeine: those have to be declared by name whether they arrive as a flavouring or not. Everything else a flavouring is built from can stay off Standard 1.2.4’s ingredient list.
Baby food has to spell out compound ingredients
Baby food gets treated more strictly than other food in one specific place. Standard 1.2.4 blocks infant food from the compound-ingredient shortcut that every other product is allowed: ordinary food can name a compound ingredient once and bracket its parts underneath it; infant food has to list each part on its own line. That tightening does not reach the flavouring exemption above. Nothing in the Code writes an infant carve-out into that clause, so the two words cover exactly as much on a Farex pouch as on a packet of adult biscuits.
Where the exemption stops
It stops at allergens. Standard 1.1.2 defines a flavouring substance as a food additive. Standard 1.2.3 requires a declarable allergen to be declared even when it arrives as, or inside, a food additive. So the two words can cover a formulation the label never spells out. They cannot cover a declared allergen: gluten is spelled out on both Farex panels above, and milk on the porridge, flavouring or not.
”Natural” has no definition in the Code
The Code defines a “permitted flavouring substance” by pointing at four named lists: the FEMA GRAS lists (a US flavour-industry reference, its 1960 to 2024 editions), a Council of Europe list, an annex to an EU regulation, or the matching US federal rule. None of the four turns on the word “natural.” Standard 1.1.2 defines “flavouring substance” in detail and never defines “natural” at all. FSANZ’s own labelling guidance puts the practical result in plain English: “Enzymes and most flavourings (or flavour) do not need to be named or identified by a food additive number and can be labelled by their class name only.”
On the apple and oatmeal panel, the name printed directly above “Natural Flavour” is Oat Bran, at 3.0%. Descending order puts a ceiling on everything printed below it, and that ceiling is as close to a quantity as either panel goes.
General information, not medical advice. Chat with your GP or child health nurse.