Pet Peeve #3: All Natural is NOT Necessarily Good
One of my pet peeves is when food is labeled "All Natural". This label implies that natural foods are healthier than non-natural foods. For that matter, this implies that anything made by nature is intrinsically better than artificially manmade equivalents.
Keep in mind that sugar is natural. So is fat (saturated and unsaturated), cooking oil, crude oil (fossil fuel), cholesterol, alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana, just to name a few potentially harmful yet natural things. Of course, quantity and frequency of using these items are key in determining if they are truly harmful or not.
Even most drugs, including prescription medications, are initially derived from natural ingredients. Chemically manmade equivalents are identical in every way to natural ingredients.
Furthermore, mankind has the ability of making things better than they are naturally. For instance, juice is often fortified with vitamins. Totally artificial are also beneficial, such as prescription drugs are in doses that are higher than those found in nature. Multi-vitamins and vaccines prevent thousands of known diseases and illnesses.
Of course, not everything manmade is better than nature either. Junk food and pollution are the perfect examples of this.
Therefore, I believe that the labeling of "All Natural" on food is misleading. Consumers need to be careful will potentially deceptive advertising... as always.
by Phil for Humanity
on 02/20/2009