Natural has become one of the most misleading terms used in marketing (as in all natural ingredients). The word natural has various meanings, but the marketing usage distorts the “comes from nature” meaning to take advantage of false associations.
Natural Isn’t Safe
When used to describe food, medicine or other products, natural is often used to imply safety. However this association is demonstrably false. There are a huge number of natural things that are extremely dangerous. There are the obvious, venoms (snakes, spiders, jellyfish, etc), toxins found in mushrooms and poisonous plants and heavy metals (mercury, lead, etc, all of which occur naturally in the environment). Some things that are safe for some people, like peanuts, can be deadly to others. Further many substances are safe in some (or most) conditions, but become dangerous in others. For example ever water can be toxic if one drinks too much too quickly, (see Water Intoxication). Thus the claim that a substance is safe simply because it is natural is clearly false.
The only reliable way to tell if substance is safe, be it natural or not, is to test it. However even substances that are found to be safe via testing, should only be assumed to be safe within the limitations of the tests. There are few substances that people assume to be as safe as pure water. However every few years someone gets sick or dies after purposefully drinking too much water. Simply because normal amounts of water is safe does not mean that large amounts is also safe.
Natural Isn’t Healthy
The other major false association that is that natural is healthy. Most of health problems, world wide, are the result of perfectly natural causes. Disease is probably the biggest health issue and most diseases are caused by bacteria, viruses and other pathogens which are perfectly natural. In the developed world, where better sanitation and access to modern medicine makes these diseases rare, we are faced with issues of excess. Fat, sugar and carbohydrates are all natural ingredients in the food we, and our ancestors, eat. However today the ease of access to food has lead to a different set of diseases, caused by the excessive consumption of these natural ingredients. Thus simply because something is natural does not mean it is healthy.
Corollary: What Unnatural Isn’t
An equally important point, is that unnatural is no more unsafe or unhealthy than natural, which means, the only way to determine if something is safe, natural or otherwise, is through testing.
So what’s the point?
Every so often we discover something new, either natural or not. Instead of blindly accepting something because it is natural or dismissing it because it is not, we need to test it. Only through testing can something be determined to be safe and the limitations of its safe usage.
Hopefully the next time you see an ad for a food, supplement, face cream, drug, etc that says “all natural ingredients” you won’t be fooled into thinking that means much more that if it said “now comes in blue”.