"Processed" is not a four-letter word, but maybe "natural" should be one.

A few weeks ago my husband and I ate lunch at a tapas restaurant in the Gaslamp District. The food was delicate, simple, unique, and delicious. We enjoyed wine, good food, and good company. Topics of conversation ranged from politics to molecular gastronomy to Easy Cheese. I long for a restaurant to include Easy Cheese among the table-top condiments. Why not? It does not require refrigeration and it is a source of calcium. It says so on the can. Well, maybe Easy Cheese is not your thing. Truth be told, I enjoy the idea of Easy Cheese more than actual Easy Cheese. What I do really love, though, is no-stir, highly spreadable peanut butter. The smoother and silkier the better. Process it. Process the hell out of it.

"Natural" equals big bucks

According to a news article written by Roberto A. Ferdman (June 24, 2014, Washington Post Blog), the food industry is making a fortune off of the segment of our society that purchases items marked with the "natural" food label. Purchasing products with the "natural" health claim has become a more than 40 billion dollar industry! But nobody from consumers to manufacturers can explain what a "natural" claim actually means. It is a real boon for industry, but kinda shitty for consumers. 

This is an issue that has been getting a lot of attention over the past several years. At first, this started with legal questions that were taken to court, were somewhat isolated to specific interest groups and did not garner mass media attention. Now, we are seeing the question regarding what "natural" means spread across the news. 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/Breyers_Ice_Cream_old_and_new_packaging_designs.jpg

•  Cargill settles lawsuit regarding Truvia products (stevia extracts) labeled as "natural".

• American Bar Association - Confusion in the Court over "All Natural" Claims - April 30, 2012 article by Dawn Goulet

• Food Buyers Lean Towards a Natural Food Claim that is Hard to Define (LA Times, Accessed September 10. 2014)

• "Natural" is so Unnatural (SF Gate, Accessed September 10, 2014)

What do "natural" and "processed" mean?

Natural:

At this time, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not legally defined "natural." This is what the FDA has on their website (accessed September 19, 2014) 

• "From a food science perspective, it is difficult to define a food product that is 'natural' because the food has probably been processed and is no longer the product of the earth. That said, FDA has not developed a definition for use of the term natural or its derivatives. However, the agency has not objected to the use of the term if the food does not contain added color, artificial flavors, or synthetic substances."

Since the FDA has not provided us with a definition of "natural," here are a couple of definitions that I found online that might apply:

• "Having undergone little or no processing and containing no chemical additives." Dictionary.com (Accessed September 19, 2014)

• "Having had a minimum of processing or preservative treatment." "Existing in or derived from nature; not made or caused by humankind." Oxford Dictionary (Accessed, September 19. 2014)

The FDA provides guidelines for manufacturers to use to determine if "natural" applies to their product, however, these are ultimately suggestions and not legal requirements.

Processed:

From a food science perspective, any type of modification made to a food from its original state makes that food or resulting product processed. Below are a couple of definitions of the word "processed."

• "Prepare or modify by an artificial process" (Processed (#19) Dictionary.com (Accessed 9/19/2014))

• "Perform a series of mechanical or chemical operations on (something) in order to change or preserve it." Oxford Dictionaries (Accessed 9/19/2014)

Practical implications?

I often get to talk with people about food. Sometimes during these encounters people explain that they completely avoid or strictly limit their intakes of processed food. Through the course of our discussion, it usually comes out what we're really talking about is a strong preference for wholesome, nutrient rich foods over foods filled with empty calories and strange sounding ingredients. The conflict arises when there is also a need and desire for healthy, quick food choices that are easy to cook. We're all busy. This makes sense.

All of the premixed/cut/washed salad bags and other produce as well as the preserved products including quick frozen fruits and vegetables are all processed foods. However, these are not the types of processed foods that most of us are looking to avoid (Surprise! This is Processed Too! Accessed September 18, 2014).  

From a consumer standpoint, it is totally unhelpful and unacceptable that the FDA resists defining "natural" for use as a health claim on food labels. It does not look like they will be proposing a definition anytime soon. 


From a food science and industry standpoint, I appreciate the complexity involved in defining the term "natural." Trying to create a definition raises many questions and issues such as:

• How do you define the cutoff with regard to how much processing falls within the "natural" limit? 

• What types of processing would be permissible, reasonable, and acceptable under the "natural" definition? 

• Processing will vary with different types of foods and products. Would different definitions or standards for "natural" be created for different products or classes of products? What stakeholders would contribute to the development and regulation of this?

• What about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) - where do they fit in to a "natural" definition?

The Stevia Conundrum

I first learned about Stevia in 1999 when I studied with an herbalist. She used stevia in the liquid tincture form with her diabetic clients who were limiting their intake of simple sugars (simple carbohydrates). I later went to graduate school to study nutrition as a science and learned about all sorts of things including artificial and alternative sweeteners and was reintroduced to stevia. By this point, stevia had come a long way and was available as powder in individual packets. It tasted better and stevia is now everywhere and not just at the health food store and in the herbalists' treasure chests. 

Stevia comes from leaves of a South American shrub called Stevia rebaudiana.

By Mokkie (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Stevia is typically 100-300 times sweeter than table sugar. The sweetness of stevia comes from what are called steviol glycosides within the leaves of the stevia plant. Because the stevia plant is so sweet compared to table sugar, it has to be diluted in some way in order to be tolerable. Steviol glycosides are often extracted from the leaves and attached to bulking agents. The bulking agents serve as a way to deliver the steviol glycosides and essentially dilute the excessive sweetness of stevia. 

In the past few years, some of the major stevia alternative sweetener producers have come under legal fire for the use of the term "natural" on their stevia products. Companies have settled lawsuits about this and have or are in the process of removing the term "natural" from the label claims on their stevia products. At the core of the debate is the difference between consumers' expectations of what the term "natural" implies when it is presented as a health claim versus the methods by which a given product is produced. In these cases, the companies reported that they responsibly produced the product using reasonable and acceptable methods and did not intentionally mislead consumers with the term "natural." Both Cargill and PureVia settled and agreed to discontinue using the "natural" label claim PureVia to settle class action suit over natural claims (Accessed August 20, 2014).

No matter what preparation is used, whether it is a liquid or a powder, there will always be much more of the bulking agent or diluent than stevia in the final preparation of the product. Ingredient lists appear in order of weight. The ingredient present in the highest amount by weight is always listed first and that present in the smallest amount by weight is always listed last. If steviol glycosides or stevia were listed at the top of the ingredient list, the product would not be palatable. About every 1/4 to 1/2 packet of stevia that Lydia Rodarte-Quayle, Head of Logistics at Madrigal (Breaking Bad) poured into her pretentious cup of tea is about equal to 1 teaspoon of sugar (Truvia conversion chart, PureVia conversion chart). Even in the final prepared state, stevia alternative sweetener is still quite sweet.

Other considerations

• This article, What you need to know about food regulation - Huffington Post, provides a summary of different definitions (and lack of) in use by the FDA including terms like "organic," GMO," and "local."

• This is a video that was posted September 17, 2014 about the debate surrounding the use of golden rice (rice genetically modified to supply vitamin A) to combat vitamin A deficiency. The video comes from PBS News Hour (accessed September 22, 2014) and is called The GMO debate grows over golden rice in Philippines.

• This is an article that appeared in the NY Times about two Northern California moms who sued General Mills. They accused General Mills of false advertising because they used the term "natural" on their label for Nature Valley products which contain GMOs. NY Times - General Mills & GMOs (2012)

• This is a recent article that discusses the other side of the GMO debate. It appeared in Forbes online September 17, 2014: The debate about GMO safety is over thanks to a new trillion meal study (Forbes.com).  

Final Thoughts

"Processed" is not a four-letter word. Processing food is not inherently bad or evil. It is how we eat. Some of our food requires processing in order to be eaten. I'm not going to eat raw eggs, dry lentils, uncooked rice, raw chicken, a plain old unpeeled and uncooked beet, or a potato fresh out of the ground! I can't do it, I don't think you can do it (at least I hope you can't and won't) and I know I won't survive it without consequences. We need to process our food and that is okay.

As consumers, we are bombarded with advertising and inconsistent messaging on our food labels with regard to what is considered "natural." As a society more people are standing up and saying that we need some standards in place about what is and what is not "natural" when it comes to our food labels. It is, at least for now, up to each one of us to create a personal definition of "natural" and to use that together with the ingredient list on food labels to inform our purchasing decisions. Ingredient lists are highly regulated. 

You have power to influence the industry. You can do this by choosing whether or not to purchase products based on informed decisions made after comparing a package labeled "natural" with the ingredient list. If you find that the ingredients do not match up to your expectations set by that manufacturer's "natural" label claim, then it is your right to make a different purchase. You might even write the company and let them know why you did not purchase their product. If those of us bothered by this lack of a labeling definition and misguided labeling claims speak up more and spend less, maybe we can make a dent in the profit margins. If profits start to shift, maybe behavior will as well.