So I'm having my lunch today, eating some kind of microwaved Indian food, and I get to thinking "This food tastes pretty good. I wonder what kind of spices they use for it." So, naturally I look at the ingredients list. It's got spinach, tomato, tomato, water, spices, salt... Wait, did that just list the spices as "spices"?

Yes, the spices are listed as "spices". Well that's good to know. I'm glad they put spices in the food. It might've been pretty bland otherwise. What are they?!

You know, what one person considers a spice, someone else might consider a lethal poison. What qualifications does something have to meet for it be merely listed as "spices"? Would rat feces be a spice? I am eating factory-produced food, here.

There's a few other ingredients that are often left ambiguous. "Natural flavors" and "Artificial flavors" are probably the top two. Now, "artificial flavor" kinda makes sense. They might actually have a product called "artificial flavor", stored in a jar labeled "artificial flavor, add to anything". But "natural flavor"? The name implies that it's natural, but anything left so ambiguous certainly can't be natural. I mean, to me, natural flavor would be something like "tomato" or "grape", or maybe an extract of either. I think anything going beyond extract status would then be considered artificial. So what are these natural flavors? It can't be the natural flavors of the other ingredients, because that would be a bit on the redundant side. They may as well call it "mystery flavor", becuase that's about as helpful in figuring out what it is.