You see the word "natural" on a food label, and you assume it means that there's nothing artificial in it, not even seasonings, right? So you figure that it must be healthier for you.
Maybe, but maybe not, warns ShopSmart, the shopping magazine from the publisher of Consumer Reports. As strange as it sounds, "natural" doesn't necessarily mean that a food is free of additives. The Food and Drug Administration doesn't formally define the term, so manufacturers are able to make the claim even when a product package clearly lists synthetic preservatives or added colorings, for example.
To get a good sense of the "natural" foods market, ShopSmart took a field trip to some health food stores and regular supermarkets. Though some products labeled natural seemed pretty natural to its shoppers based on their ingredients lists, plenty of others have ingredients that didn't sound particularly wholesome. These 10 products are a sampling of what they found. The lesson: Always read ingredient lists — don't take labels at face value.
NOT-SO-NATURAL FOODS
Kraft Natural Cheese Mild Cheddar Cheese. "Natural cheese" is printed prominently on the front of this clear plastic pouch, but look at the ingredients list on the back. It includes annatto, a coloring derived from the seeds of a subtropical tree. That bright orange coloring might come from nature, but it has been added to this cheese.
- Casa Fiesta All Natural Taco Seasoning. Its label insists that it has "no artificial ingredients" and "no preservatives." Yet the seasoning contains maltodextrin, a processed starch derivative that's used to add flavor and texture to many packaged foods.
- Crystal Light Natural Lemonade Drink Mix. "Natural lemonade" sounds wholesome, but "there's no lemonade flavor in nature; it's lemon flavor," says Stephen Gardner of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The ingredients list also has maltodextrin, artificial coloring agents and BHA, a synthetic preservative. The CSPI has notified Kraft, which makes Crystal Light, that a lawsuit is looming if it doesn't correct the label.
- Whole Foods Dr. Snap All Natural Soda. Whole Foods' house brand, 365 Everyday Value, puts out its own fizzy beverage line, and the Dr. Snap flavor gets its dark color from "caramel coloring," which is artificial. The ingredient presents another concern: ShopSmart's recent tests found that some types of caramel coloring can contain 4-Mel, a possible carcinogen.
- Kikkoman Naturally Brewed Soy Sauce. The label boasts that this sauce "is naturally brewed from wheat, soybeans, water, and salt." But that doesn't mean all of the ingredients are natural. It contains synthetic sodium benzoate, a preservative that's found in lots of processed foods.
- Fiber One Naturally Flavored Chewy Bars. Naturally flavored? Maybe, but this is a slippery claim, especially considering all of the artificial stuff on the ingredients list of these chocolate and oat bars: maltodextrin, caramel color, high maltose corn syrup and cocoa processed with alkali.
- Stubb's Smokey Mesquite All-Natural Bar-B-Q Sauce. Water, tomato paste, sugar, vinegar — it's all good until you get further down the list, where you'll find caramel color. Sometimes that appears on labels as "artificial color."
- Voortman Naturally Flavored Sugar-Free Lemon Wafer Cookies. There could be natural flavoring inside these cookies. But the ingredients list also contains artificial coloring agents, as well as aspartame, the synthetic sweetener.
- All Natural Bosco Chocolate Syrup. Could this old-school topping really be all natural? Not really. The first ingredient on the list is high fructose corn syrup, the highly processed sweetener used in countless packaged foods, even though the stuff doesn't exist in nature.
- Molly McButter Natural Butter Flavor Sprinkles. A butter substitute that's fat-free and only 5 calories per serving? Yep, too good to be true. This " natural" product (which is usually found in the popcorn aisle) contains the very non-natural partially hydrogenated soybean oil, as well as maltodextrin and extracts of annatto.
source: http://hanfordsentinel.com/
