Just what is 'natural' food?


Instead, it morphed into the GMO Inside campaign, which -- among other things -- is behind a Colorado lawsuit that claims Goldfish crackers shouldn't be labeled as "natural" because they contain genetically engineered soybean oil.



Until a couple of years ago, Ben & Jerry's ice cream was labeled as natural. Then the company came under pressure from the Center for Science in the Public Interest because the ice cream contained -- among other things -- partially hydrogenated soybean oil. Unlike genetically engineered foods, for which there is little, if any, evidence of harm to human health, partially hydrogenated oil has been implicated as an artery-clogging ingredient to be avoided.

And you can bet the soybean oil didn't hydrogenate itself. The company agreed to drop the "natural" label in 2010.

The real issue here isn't whether GMO Inside believes that different methods of human tinkering make some foods less natural than others, but that the reassuring word "natural" is included on many a product's label while meaning almost nothing. A 2009 study found that shoppers thought "natural" meant a purer, more regulated substance than "organic." It's the other way around.

But the whole point of rules for labeling is to allow people to make informed decisions about their food. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has considered defining the term a couple of times and most recently gave up the effort in 2008. As the examples above show, attempts to regulate use of the word would be complicated, fraught with politics and would almost certainly involve multiple lawsuits.