A recent investigation led by Food Babe Vani Hari revealed that pumpkin spice lattes aren’t made with pumpkin or spices, but a food scientist thinks you might want to keep it that way.

Note: The pumpkin sauce used by Starbucks does contain annato, but specifically uses it to create a pumpkin-like color, not for flavor.

Food scientist Kantha Shelke released a video with the Institute of Food Technologists to prevent panic in the streets and explain how the “natural and artificial flavors” in pumpkin spice sauce trick our brains.

Essentially, chemically created flavors can hit the right notes on our taste buds to make us feel like we’re drinking a pumpkin pie. If you tried to use real spices, you’d end up making more of a chai latte instead.

Though these flavors are FDA approved, Hari also unearthed a few more troubling findings about other Starbucks ingredients like the carcinogenic caramel sauce and the condensed milk in the pumpkin sauce that nullifies an otherwise vegan/lactose-intolerant order.

Maybe Starbucks is trying to gradually poison our basic bitch population.

h/t NPR