Welcome to another edition of The Nutrition Overlords
Knowledge Bombs®: Natural Label Edition
I promise to keep this one short(ish).
So you're walking down the aisle of your local grocery store
and you pass by the eggs. Other than there being approximately 30 different
brands, you notice some of them carry this fancy 'natural' label (and
probably cost $2 more per dozen). So what does this ambiguous label
mean anyway?
First, we have to break foods into one of two categories,
because heaven forbid food labeling be simple. In the first group, we have
meat, poultry, and egg products. In the second group we have everything else.
When the term 'natural' is applied to
meat, poultry, and eggs it actually means something! In the USDA's Food
Standards and Labeling Policy Book (a joyous read, I assure you) under the
Natural Claims section (page 116) it states that meat/poultry/egg products
carrying the natural label must meet these two standards [1]:
1 – “The product does not contain any artificial flavor or flavoring, coloring ingredient, or chemical preservative (as defined in 21 CFR101.22), or any other artificial or synthetic ingredient.”
2 – “The product and its ingredients are not more than minimally processed. Minimal processing may include: (a) those traditional processes used to make food edible or to preserve it or to make it safe for human consumption, e.g., smoking, roasting, freezing, drying, and fermenting, or (b) those physical processes which do not fundamentally alter the raw product and/or which only separate a whole, intact food into component parts, e.g., grinding meat, separating eggs into albumen and yolk, and pressing fruits to produce juices.”
These standards are only applied to meat/poultry/eggs
because the USDA does not have regulatory jurisdiction outside of these food categories [1].
So what about everything else? Well, this is where the FDA
steps in. The FDA has "not developed a definition for use of the term
natural or its derivatives. However, the agency has not objected to the use of
the term if the food does not contain added color, artificial flavors, or
synthetic substances" [2].
So there you have it. All-Natural actually means
something…sometimes…depending on the food…because regulatory jurisdiction.
Maybe that will be my next Knowledge Bomb®. Food Labeling:
Welcome to Clusterfuckistan.
Sources
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