"define" news and stories

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)."

We have been told constantly since the new food pyramid was released that whole grains are essential to a healthy diet. There are many names for breads that contain whole grains: seven-grain, multi-grain, whole wheat. But the name, until this week, was actually no guarantee that the bread itself contained whole grains. A wide range of other products - from cereal to pasta - claim whole grains as a component.  This week, the Food and Drug Administration issued guidelines that define what a "whole grain" product actually is. According to CBC news, the FDA says that whole grains must have the intact, ground, cracked or flaked fruit of the grains. "The grain's principal components - the starchy endosperm, germ and bran - are also in the same relative proportions as they exist in the intact grain. Such grains may include barley, buckwheat, bulgur and corn."

The definition is merely in draft form at this point and it is unclear whether federal labeling regulations might be applied in the future. Some companies - like General Mills - asked for a specific guideline as to what might be considered to be a "good" or "excellent" source of whole grains, but the FDA has refused to issue one at this time.

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