Question

According to the Making Ethical Decisions box, there is more and more confusion growing around what makes a product "natural." What is the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) considering doing to alleviate the confusion?

Answer 1

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is considering creating a definition for “natural” in order to reduce the growing confusion about what makes a product natural.

Explanation:

There has always been a lot of confusion in human food products labeling regarding the use of the term ‘natural’ for a product.

The FDA has termed a product to be ‘natural’ if it contains only natural content without adding any artificial chemicals like color or flavor additives.

However, there lies a lot of confusion whether to include how the product was manufactured. Usage of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, preservatives, food technologies like irradiation, pasteurization etc is not considered under the term ‘natural’.  

Organic and GMO products also need to be defined and classified accordingly and not confused with the term ‘natural’.  

Hence, the FDA is considering the option of defining the term ‘natural’ for labeling food products .