The
feds are finally cracking down on misleading labels, but you're still better
off buying organic for now.
Scenario: You’re at the store, trying to make healthy yet frugal
choices. You see several products labeled “organic” and others labeled
“natural.”
You’re trying to buy good food and household products for less,
and those organic items seem to cost a bit more. Maybe natural is just as good,
right? What’s the difference?
It comes down to standards.
Federal organic standards ban the use of pesticides, synthetic
fertilizers, and most synthetic ingredients in any certified organic product.
So that organic label means something.
Natural, on the other hand, generally means nothing. It’s
usually a feel-good label slapped on packaging to attract consumers who value
their health and the environment to a product that may not be good for either.
Yet a few years ago, a report made headlines with the finding that consumers prefer natural to organic products. Clearly there’s some confusion.
The Food and Drug Administration is now exploring developing a
new “natural” food label, which would at last have a specific,
legal meaning. Historically, the agency has defined products free of artificial
or synthetic ingredients as natural, though other agencies have their own
definitions.
Despite these standards, no products with a “natural” label have
undergone a rigorous certification program like the ones organic products must
clear. It’s been a free-for-all.
That could change, though.
This spring, for the first time, the Federal Trade Commission cracked down on five sellers of skin and hair care
products claiming to be natural despite containing not-so-natural ingredients
with names like dimethicone and phenoxyethanol.
Body care products have historically been a tricky area even for
the organic label.
Technically, organic standards only apply to food. But body care
products often use edible ingredients like olive oil or aloe vera. Shouldn’t
the same rules that apply to the organic olive oil you dip your bread in apply
to the olive oil in your lip balm?
Increasingly they do — in part because the government agreed to allow
the USDA Organic seal on the labels of products that meet the same legal
requirements as organic food. Many retailers have also begun refusing to carry
body care products that claim to be organic but aren’t.
Hopefully this first action by the Federal Trade Commission will
spur other manufacturers to either clean up their ingredients or change their
natural labels too, if only out of fear of legal action.
In a perfect world, the word natural would have a clearly
defined meaning, and only products that met the definition would carry a label
bearing that term. Alas, that is not the case in our world.
While the government takes timid steps at policing misleading
labels, health-conscious consumers can send food and body care manufacturers a
message of their own by opting for organic over natural.
OtherWords
columnist Jill Richardson is the author of Recipe for America: Why
Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It. OtherWords.org.