"All-natural!"

"No artificial colors or flavors!"

"No harsh chemicals!"

So read the food labels of many products marketed towards your health and well-being. The implication, of course, is that natural food ingredients are inherently safer than artificial ones. Artificial ingredients are supposed to be bad for us. They are supposed to cause cancer, headaches, hyperactivity in kids, depression, unemployment, poverty, traffic jams, and of course natural disasters.

Okay, maybe they're not that bad, but you get the idea. Natural ingredients are supposed to be safer and healthier. We eat an "all-natural" product and we feel good and confident that we are doing something healthy for our bodies. Natural is better ... right?

Here's a list of some natural substances that people have consumed in the past: Coumarin, calamus oil, ephedra. What do these natural substances all have in common? They have all been banned from the market by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for being unsafe for humans and are no longer legal food ingredients.

Coumarin used to be found in many artificial vanilla flavorings until the FDA banned it in 1978. While coumarin was found in artificial vanilla, the substance itself is quite natural. It's a natural toxin found in many plants, particularly tonka beans and bison grass. Coumarin is moderately toxic to the liver and kidneys. In fact, it's also used as a rat poison. It's also used to make the drug warfarin (Coumadin), an anticoagulant drug, which means it helps stop blood clots.

Calamus oil, which is an oil from the calamus plant, was banned as a food additive by the FDA in 1968. It was banned because it was found to be carcinogenic when ingested by mouth.

Ephedra, a natural herb used for weight loss, was banned by the FDA in 2004 because of accumulating evidence of adverse health effects and possible deaths due to the stimulant.

The point is that all of these products are "natural" products, yet aren't safe to consume. There are many other things found in nature that are also not safe to consume. For example, aflatoxin is a naturally occurring toxin produced by a fungus. It is known to be toxic and carcinogenic in high amounts. All commercial peanut butter has minute quantities of aflatoxin, but not in amounts that are high enough to be harmful.

So remember "natural" is not always better. Everything in moderation is key. Next time, I'll even discuss how artificial ingredients can sometimes be safer than natural ingredients.