I've really been diving into the world of natural versus artificial additives in the last few blogs. When it comes down to it, the real questions are, what exactly is a "natural" ingredient, and what separates "artificial" from "natural" ones? If you do some digging, you'll see there's really no clear-cut way to determine this. 

One way to define "natural" is any product that would appear on its own without human intervention. Based on this definition, stevioside is not a natural sweetener, since it requires human intervention to extract it from the stevia herb. Another way to define a "natural" product is one that is made from natural ingredients that exist on their own, but the product itself would not exist on its own without human intervention

By this definition, cake is a natural product. While cake does not exist on its own in nature, it is made from ingredients that do exist on their own (flour, sugar, eggs, etc.). By this definition, however, aspartame (Nutrasweet) is also a natural product. Aspartame is created by combining two amino acids, phenylalanine and aspartic acid, with methanol, all of which are found naturally in the foods we eat. Yet many people consider aspartame as "artificial."

When it comes to flavorings, the FDA defines "natural flavor" as this:

"The essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis, which contains the flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof, whose significant function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional."

Whoa. Okay, I can breathe again now that I got that all out. Any other flavor added on top of that is considered artificial. However, flavors—artificial or natural—are made by scientists in a laboratory by blending either "natural" chemicals or "synthetic" chemicals. So, again, the line between "artificial" and "natural" is not distinct. 

Let's take a look at an ingredient list and see if you are able to tell what is natural and what is artificial. Let's take a bar of soap, for example. The ingredients for this bar of soap might read:

Olive oil, palm oil, coconut oil, water, glycerine.

If you saw this list of ingredients, you would think that this product is mostly natural. You then look at the ingredients for another bar of soap, and they read:

Sodium olivate, sodium palmitate, sodium cocoate, dihydrogen monoxide, glycerine.

Looking at this list, you might think that this product is mostly artificial. However, these are the exact same ingredients as in the other bar of soap! 

The take-home message is this: Rather than worrying about an ingredient as natural or artificial, you should worry about its safety record and whether it's been thoroughly tested. The line between what's artificial and what's natural is more like a fuzzy haze than a line. For more information on food safety, visit the Food Ingredients and Packaging section of the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.