Secrets of Mind and Reality

All natural: the most ambiguous phrase of the times

Chiefly due to environmental awareness and the animal rights movement, the term, all natural, has come into our everyday vocabulary. Natural is good, right? The corporate marketing minds have successfully hyped the public with the all natural label, applying the phrase to everything from chickens to makeup. They found that by affixing the label to almost any product, sales for that item soared. However, there is no definitive meaning to the phrase.

This is where the hype becomes deceptive. After all, you can’t get more natural than a chicken. Or can you? Have you ever heard of an unnatural chicken? One chicken supplier may designate his product to be all natural, meaning that the chicken wasn’t fed antibiotics or growth hormones, although this natural chicken spent her entire life in an indoor cage crowded amongst thousands of others. Another supplier may regard an all natural chicken product to be one which is not injected with water after slaughter to pump up the weight. On the other hand, a free-range chicken is probably the best bet for procuring an all natural chicken. These birds aren’t fed the hormones or pumped up with water, are fed natural grains and allowed to roam freely just as they would - naturally. The confusion makes it apparent that there ought to be a specific definition which removes the hype and keeps the meat producer honest.

How about natural makeup? This is almost an oxymoron. We weren’t born with makeup on our faces. Therefore, makeup cannot be natural. Ah, but if you look at it a bit differently, it could be. One of the latest trends in makeup is the products which are made from minerals. Now, how natural can you get? You could argue that while minerals are all natural, minerals on your face are not.

Speaking of minerals, did you know that selenium, a trace mineral, may be taken as an internal supplement that provides a remedy for psoriasis and excema-like conditions? People with diabetes sometimes are plagued with this skin condition, due to an inadequate supply of selenium. Although your doctor should know better, he may prescribe a popular dandruff shampoo to rub into the skin as a help. The active ingredient in this shampoo? Selenium. It would appear that the all natural remedy here is taking the supplement to eradicate the condition, rather than using a costly product that only helps alleviate it.

Until such time as product industries are ready to define this ambiguous term, it’s up to you to do your homework and find out how truly natural - or unnatural - that product is.