Note that "natural" does not mean it's "real" vanilla extract. It just refers to how the chemical compounds that taste like vanilla were obtained (which may or may not have involved actual vanilla in the first place).

Commented more above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12454658

Yes, but if you're using vanilla the way most people do, paying the 3x extra for "natural" is not strictly speaking a rational decision; it's the vendors of "natural" vanilla who are playing games in that case.

Which is what makes vanilla, I think, an interesting parallel to truffles.