What Does Nutrition Mean Articles & Resources

"People have come to think that 'natural' is synonymous with healthful, which isn't necessarily true," says Melina Beth Jampolis, MD, a San Francisco-based member of the American Society of Bariatric Physicians--specialists in treating obesity. "Salt is natural, but too much of it is bad for you."

On the other hand, some forms of "unnatural" processing, such as pasteurizing milk to kill bacteria, yield huge health benefits.

Poetic License

"Obviously, there is a lot of poetic license taken with the way foods are advertised," Jampolis adds. In fact, advertisers can make virtually any claim they want about how natural their products are, with two exceptions.

The first is when the word is used in connection with flavors. In that case, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) defines a natural flavor as one that is derived "from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf" or similar plant (or even animal) material.

The second exception, irrelevant to vegetarians, involves the use of the word "natural" in meat and poultry products. The US Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service allows the word to be used on minimally processed meat and poultry products with no artificial ingredients or added colors.

"Most people think natural is good and artificial is bad, but nutritionally, that's also not always the case," says Robert Wolke, professor emeritus of chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh, food columnist for The Washington Post and author of What Einstein Told His Cook." Kitchen Science Explained.

Almost all foods today are processed in some way, and unless you are able to buy exclusively from a farmers' market or grow your own fruits and vegetables, much of what you eat has seen the inside of a lab, factory or high-tech warehouse. Food science has become so sophisticated that it can be difficult to know where natural ends and unnatural begins.

Classic Example

Tomatoes are the classic example. "They are routinely picked green and then gassed with ethylene, a plant hormone that encourages them to ripen and become red," Wolke says. "This can be seen as an artificial process done to speed up the ripening that ordinarily would take place anyway. And the chemical content of the tomato doesn't change as a result, so is it natural or not? That's impossible to say." The flavor, of course, is another matter.

Even to produce what the FDA would consider a natural flavor, Wolke explains, takes a great deal of work in a lab or factory. "You can process almonds to extract almond flavor, which is benzaldehyde. Or you can manufacture benzaldehyde in a lab with much less effort. But the chemical compound you end up with in both cases is identical, so it is difficult to say what makes the 'artificial' almond flavor 'unnatural.'"

Most people think they know what "natural" means, however, and they shop accordingly. A January 2002 study by the Washington, DC-based National Consumers League (NCL) found that 76 percent of those surveyed believed that foods with "natural" on the package should contain at least 90 percent natural ingredients; 80 percent said "natural" products were "good for them." However, as NCL President Linda Golodner said when the study was released, "products with the 'natural' labeling are not required by law to contain only natural ingredients."

Unsuspecting Consumers

When unscrupulous marketers exploit such expectations, they manipulate unsuspecting health-conscious consumers, making it more difficult for them to make intelligent choices among products.

These marketers also cast doubt on the well-founded claims made by the hundreds of food companies, most rather small, whose commitment to using natural ingredients is genuine. That is unfortunate because many of their products come about as close as possible to what you'd pick from a backyard garden, find at a roadside farm stand or--with flour and other grain-based products--buy at a water-powered gristmill.

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.

* The appearance of the USDA organic label guarantees that food has been grown without conventional pesticides and fertilizers and developed without genetic engineering. For food to carry the USDA organic seal, government-approved certifiers must inspect the farms on which it is raised and the facilities of companies that handle it to verify that relevant USDA standards are met.

* Products with more than one ingredient--think breakfast cereals--may carry USDA organic labels if they include at least 70 percent organic ingredients. Products containing less than 70 percent organic ingredients may not use the word "organic" on the front label of a package; they may, however, use "organic" before the name of a specific item on an ingredients list.

* Although recent research indicates that organic fruits and vegetables may indeed be more nutritious than conventional produce, the USDA organic seal addresses only the way food is produced, not its nutritional value.

'Natural' Flavors?

Although food marketers can use the word "natural" with almost no legal restrictions, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does regulate the use of the adjective in the case of flavors. A "natural" flavor is one derived "from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf" and other--even animal--materials. This does not mean that reading the labels of products with natural flavors is without complications.

So how do you know if the flavors described in a list of ingredients are natural or artificial! According to the FDA, manufacturers must label artificial ingredients as such.

If a product's blueberry flavor is from natural sources only, it is acceptable for it to be labeled either "blueberry flavor" or "natural blueberry flavor." If a product contains both natural and artificial flavorings, it should be labeled "natural and artificial blueberry flavor."

Similar rules apply to the rest of the product's package. If the name of the product implies that a specific flavoring is used (for example. Blueberry Breakfast Bars), the manufacturer must put flavoring information close to the product name on the package. In this case, you could expect to see either "natural blueberry flavoring," "natural and artificial blueberry flavoring" or "artificial blueberry flavoring."

If there is no further information on an ingredients label than the term "natural flavoring" vegetarians should beware. As the legal definition of natural flavoring indicates, it can come from a plant or animal source, and animal products can turn up where you least expect them. When in doubt about what a product contains, call the company directly and ask.