What's the deal with Natural Flavors?

After "artificial" flavors kind of whithered away ,"natural" flavors came into vogue.

Just look on the back of your favorite bar, powder, pop drink... ingredient lists. We see them everywhere. 

• RXBAR: Natural flavors
• OliPop: Natural Green Apple Flavor
• FLOURA Fiber Bars: Raspberry natural flavor
• Metamucil: Natural and artifical orange flavor

What exactly are natural flavors and how "natural" are they?

If you try calling one of these companies they will tell you that they can't give out this information. I tried calling Procter and Gamble (the company behind Metamucil) and was told to go to their website. Likely for one of two reasons. 

1. The "natural flavor" is a proprietary blend.

2. The ingredient list if they actually revealed the substances would be over 50 lines and would not fit onto the back lable. 

Are the substances in natural flavors safe?

Is the process to get the substances approved shady?

Does the public have a right to know what substances make up natural flavors they are eating?

We have sent one of the above to products to a lab to help us figure out what they exactly mean by "natural flavors". 

Stay tuned.