The "elephant in the room" here, Laura -- the point so rarely faced in consumer forums about food marketing as to be almost taboo -- is that this is all more deeply about consumer buying psychology, not the latest rhetoric by which hokey product manufactureres play to it. You see the principle elsewhere on the same labels, where "40% less sugar" and "no high-fructose corn syrup" are promotional claims of the moment. "Gluten-Free" is today claimed on products where gluten was never an issue, for the same reason "Low-Carb" was on half the US food labels in 2000 and "no saturated fats" in 1970.

Along with shallow labeling claims, manufacturers tart up their products with sugar and salt because consumers relentlessly reward it, preferring the cheaply enhanced flavors in test marketing. So, sugars crept into ingredient lists of countless products that don't need them and didn't have them before (from breads to salad dressings). For hundreds of years until modern times, ketchups were unsweetened. US canned vegetables and tomatoes are grossly salted because consumers reward the practice by buying the products, just as they reward pretentious labeling claims like "natural" or "real" ("Real Parmesan cheese!" boasts a Kraft-subsidiary pizza box, none of whose ingredients come from Italy, implying an interesting question of what could possibly constitute "unreal" Parmesan cheese.)

50 years ago, "sugar" was a positive, successful labeling catchword on breakfast-cereal labels. Sugar Smacks, Sugar Pops, and Sugar Frosted Flakes later lost the word (but not the ingredient!) when consumer notions started to disdain it. Juicy Fruit Gum early-on promoted its "artificial" flavor, when consumers perceived the concept as clever, futuristic.

Some of these consumer preferences are utter shallow fads that drive food scientists crazy. Many of the worst poisons, carcinogens, mutagens, food adulterants, and contaminants are 100% naturally occurring and wouldn't be effected by stronger labeling laws. "High-fructose corn syrup" is exactly the same as what table sugar becomes once it gets into your mouth and meets digestive enzymes (HFCS is a current lightning-rod, very successfully distracting attention from the health issues common to all dietary sugars). If consumers respond to label rhetoric, superficially-understood dietary concerns, or cheaply sharpened flavors, then professional food packagers are _obliged_ by their jobs to accommodate those responses.

Thanks for bringing up this topic! People trust the word natural even though it has no legal meaning. Love those labels.

Isn't it a bit of an inherent contradiction that anything needing a label could be called natural? Even packaged produce will thereafter have some levels of pesticides from the field (even some organic, oddly), detergents from washing the produce, plasticizers migrated into the food from the packaging, possible unnatural microbial contamination, waxes, preservatives sometimes, etc.

Maybe natural needs to be used only for things that cam be found just like that in nature?

By the way, among the ironies in your label examples is the hot-dog label, reflecting a consumer liking for "Natural Smoke Flavoring." _Natural_ wood smoke is one of the first and most famous environmental carcinogens clearly established in foods. Niels Dungal's 1961 essay "Stomach cancer in Iceland" (which was both medically and popularly republished in the US) reported on the unusually high mortality rate from gastric cancers among Iceland's (then mostly rural) population in the first half of the 20th century, its geographical correlation with the practice of home-smoking meats, and high malignancy rates when the same foods were experimentally fed to rats in the 1950s. All 100% natural.

Max Hauser, you always add great points to The Food Party! Thank you. I also found it amusing anything "natural" would be on a label from a company that raises animals like they are plastic widgets.

Love those photos.

I think the USDA Organic label (or one from another verifying organization) is appropriate for food that have "no pesticides, chemicals, no GMO’s and no irradiation"; the term natural can be a little less restrictive, as long as there's a clear way to communicate those other restrictions.

The word "natural" usually refers to flavorings. I'd say it would need to:

- Be extracted the original food (i.e., Strawberry flavoring needs to come from Strawberries)
- Only have a few simple, specified procedures that can be used to extract the flavor (i.e., you squeeze the fruit, maybe cook the juice, fermentation is fine. You might consider high fructose corn syrup unnatural, because it goes through some rather complex chemical manipulations.) Even with the chemical manipulations - as Max pointed out with respect to corn syrup - some artificial flavors are the same molecules as the natural flavors, they just come from another source. But I'm still for words having meaning ...

What is "natural smoke flavor", BTW? I have no idea how you would bottle that.

I watched that "In Defense of Food" documentary, and found it very intriguing what it said about processed food. The problem with white flour isn't what is in it, but rather, what was taken away - the wheat germ and fiber. I never thought about "processed food" in that way until then, but this thought was very enlightening to me.

Alan, Thanks for this. Good info. Look up Wrights All Natural Liquid Smoke

The natural ones should always have a label on them, https://followers-like.com

Natural flavors I have wonders what on earth is that? Or how the "national drink" of our country has no artificial substances and is pure natural. Sure it is, it grows on a bottle tree after all, oh wait...We definitely have to read the labels but more importantly understand what we read. Not everything is clear just like not everything is bad. Not every E is the evil thing. Read, learn, educate and write more pieces like that, please.

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As the article indicates, this has been an ongoing battle for years. Personally, I would like to see the word "natural" eliminated from food marketing as it is deliberately misleading. Of course Big Ag would object so that will never happen.

Consumers ultimately have a choice. Organic or chemically laden food. I would also like to see the requirements for organic seriously strengthened.

Spare me the reply that organic is an invented marketing term. It is a quick and better way of stating that this food is grown without being sprayed with pesticides, laced with chemical fertilizers, and not grown in fields contaminated by Round-Up. Organic fits the bill.