FDA encouraged to define "natural" products

by Nicole Weston, Posted Feb 16th 2006 @ 1:00PM

There is no widely accepted definition of the word "natural" as far as the Food and Drug Administration is concerned. Many products use the term in their marketing but contain synthetic ingredients and the vast majority of people would support an official definition. Smaller majorities favored basing the definition on the amount of processing that a product undergoes or how exactly the raw material is altered. The Sugar Association has been lobbying the FDA to adopt an official standard - such as the USDA has for beef and poultry - for some time to try and prevent manufactured sugar substitutes, like Splenda, from labeling themselves as a natural product. "Natural" is defined by the USDA as any product "containing no artificial ingredient or added color and [that] is only minimally processed (a process which does not fundamentally alter the raw product)."

Filed Under: Did you know?, Ingredients
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