Shouldn’t be that complicated: “Natural” should mean that none of the ingredients have been chemically processed or altered. If any of the ingredients could not have been created in your kitchen using nothing but your oven, rangetop and/or a blender or kitchen machine, that’s probably a good sign that we are getting out of the territory of natural.

If anything in the product came from an oil refinery or came in contact with a substance that you wouldn’t be advised to at least comfortably taste without risk, then again its a good tip off that you don’t want to be playing with a “natural label.”

This is definitely a tough topic. Manufacturers are continuously looking for ways to communicate benefits that will resonate well with customers and terms like “natural,” “pure,” “fresh,” etc. can all be very helpful. Having consistency and integrity around the definition of these to help the end customer is a great goal, but I fear there could be so many different definitions that they ultimately create confusion.

Customers are certainly getting more “savvy” as they make their choices and are much more empowered to influence other customers’ choices. Brands that deceive or get this wrong are likely to fail faster now than ever before. I wonder whether some of this should therefore be left to natural selection (pun intended – sorry)?

I don’t believe that a certification will pass the consumer “label recognition test” unless it is associated with a food/product safety entity such as the USDA or the FDA. To pass this test a consumer must be able to immediately recognize the label and process the legitimacy of a claim at a single glance. As an example, nearly all consumers who see a USDA Organic label can immediately process that this product is indeed organic. Whether they know what exactly organic is or isn’t is irrelevant. The recognition of this label can make the difference in the consumers decision to purchase one like item over another. The Natural Products Association is right in their approach to create a legal or finite definition of what natural is, but in my opinion it won’t really work unless they partner with the USDA in defining and creating the standards by which natural is defined. I disagree that a third party certification is as good as a USDA or FDA certification. Those third party certifications often don’t pass the… Read more »

In the fresh produce world, the distinction is clearer because it takes years to obtain organic certification, while natural (or pesticide/chemical-free) is a shorter process. Some growers look at “natural” as a mid-stage they market while awaiting full USDA organic certification. Agree with comment above that “it shouldn’t be that hard”….

As a side note, I think consumers are generally getting savvier about all labels, looking to determine whether what they eat is at least semi-healthy, whether it is ‘natural’ and/or organic, and just what it has in it.

I recently ate packaged food made by a very large manufacturer (against my better judgment – long story) that said “Made With Real Cheese!) on the package. Gee, thanks. It’s that kind of ludicrous language that makes consumers skeptical of packaged food in general.

This topic goes back at least 100 years, and was driven (partially) by such things as the discovery of vitamins, beginning with Vitamin C. Once this natural chemical was identified, and purified, there was demand for more of it, and the purer the better. As night follows day, chemists learned how to manufacture it from other “natural” materials. And so for 50 years, the drive for purity was a drive to identify and understand all the components of food, and getting them in the purest possible form was the goal. Hence, pure white sugar, pure white flour, etc., etc. This drive for purity of course meant deconstructing your food and then reconstructing it according to your superior understanding, now. But, of course, it was many years before some essential elements, like the cobalt in Vitamin B12, were discovered. And, God knows there is plenty more we still don’t know about food–hence the practical FDA standard, GRAS = “generally regarded as safe.” This means that it has been eaten for a long time by a significant… Read more »

Rustic Crust??? I love it…absolutely love it! Please invite Mr. Sterl to comment on other topics (I don’t care what they are, just so we get to hear the name again).

It’s funny that we think “natural” means “better”. There are, of course countless examples of humanly-enhanced food products (navel oranges, etc.) that end up being more convenient and/or healthier than in their natural form. If there are to be any consistent standards developed around the usage of the word, “natural” then the CPG industry needs to agree upon the specific characteristics that consumers have proven to desire in their food products, so any work that gets done on this topic has lasting value in the marketplace. Until that happens, all this discussion will do little to drive new business for the CPG and retail industries.

All Natural Foods vs. All Natural Ingredients? Semi-official FDA opinion is that a natural vegetable yellow color (e.g. annatto) used to color cheese would not be “natural,” likewise if cherry extract were used to color a beverage. [Federal law exempts from labeling added color in cheese, butter and ice cream–good lobbying by the dairy folks!] I don’t think this is in sync with consumer thinking or expectation. Years ago FDA and FTC attempted to define “natural” but got hung up because they thought it essential for any definition of natural to exclude refined sugar. Refined sugar is just raw sugar with the dirt and impurities removed. If something is natural and you are just physically separating a portion of it, how can that portion not also be natural? Europe has a concept of nature identical. That way we don’t have essentially the same thing being natural depending on where it came from or how it was made. Many basic chemicals can come from the earth or be created by a rather simple chemical reaction, e.g.… Read more »

If you involve the government to certify, it creates more government regulation & bureaucracy. If you offer third-party certification, you create a lobbying effort where the third party gets “paid off” and only chooses those companies willing to pay the price. None of these options are good. Natural = consumer awareness.