What does 'natural' mean? Some claims on food packages may be misleading

Vegetarian Times, Sept, 2004 by Alan Pell Crawford

Cynical marketers would not be able to succeed if it weren't for wishful thinking on the part of shoppers, however. They prey, after all, on consumers who make unwarranted assumptions about what "natural," "organic" and other terms mean.

"One misconception is that products containing organic ingredients are also natural, meaning, in this case, having no artificial ingredients," says Melanie Polk, RD, director of nutrition education for the American Institute for Cancer Research, also in Washington, DC. "There are breakfast cereals made front organically grown wheat with raisins made from organically grown grapes. But the cereal itself can have lots of preservatives. Or it may contain lots of added salt and sugar, which are natural, but in the quantities that you find in many breakfast cereals, they're not healthful."

Even natural and organic foods require some degree of processing. "You can harvest organically grown wheat, but you still have to take it to a Factory to turn it into wheat flakes, and then add salt and sugar to it to make it a palatable product," Wolke says. "Is it organic? Yes. Is it natural? Well, no."

Finally, indisputably natural foods--most of the items in the fresh fruit and vegetable aisles--aren't always the most nutritious choice. If they're even somewhat past their peak, a comparable product from the frozen food section is likely to be healthier. "You never know for sure how long fruits and vegetables have been on the shelf or even on the truck or in a warehouse," Polk says. "Fruits and vegetables lose nutritional value over time. If they are fresh when you bring them home, be sure to eat them within 3 or 4 days of purchase, or they will have lost so much of their nutritional value that you'd have been better off buying them frozen."

Most fruits and vegetables today are flash-frozen, meaning frozen at extremely low temperatures at harvest. "That process stops the degeneration of nutrients completely until the fruit or vegetable is thawed out," Wolke explains.

Dietary Downfall

The most useful question may be not whether a food is natural (however that's defined) or even fresh, but whether it contains the nutrients you seek--or whether it doesn't contain the additives you want to avoid.

To figure that out, the nutrition facts on the back of a package are always more revealing than advertising claims on the front. Shopping intelligently also means developing a healthy skepticism about your own capacity for self-deception when beckoned by a big bag of chips. (Or what ever your personal dietary downfall may be.)

Natural potato chips, after all, are still potato chips. Even if all they have in them are organically grown potatoes, sea salt and peanut oil, they're still not going to be good for your heart--or your waistline.

What's 'Organic' Mean?

* "Organic" and "natural" do not mean the same thing. "Organic," under the definition adopted by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), refers only to the methods by which food is grown, handled and processed and provides no assurance that food that meets USDA organic standards is more nutritious than food that does not. "Natural," when applied to fruits and vegetables, has not been assigned a regulatory definition by the USDA.