the term natural on a food label has no defined meaning nor is it regulated by the FDA. The term plant-based sometimes suggests that a product is improved because it’s replaced meat with plants. There are too many unregulated and misleading terms to cover here but there are a few I want to highlight.
USDA Certified Organic
The organic label you see on products at the grocery store is a certification of the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (see Figure 2-3). Food companies pay to use the label. The label, or seal, indicates that the food was produced through the approved methods as defined by the USDA. In terms of science, all food is organic, as it contains carbon matter. So what’s all the fuss about?
The USDA defines organic as crops that haven’t used synthetic pesticides, herbicides, or fertilizers and are free from any genetic engineering or ionizing radiation. (Keep in mind that organic crops can still be sprayed with approved natural pesticides. Just because a substance is natural, however, doesn’t mean that it still can’t be harmful.)
Courtesy of U.S. Department of Agriculture
FIGURE 2-3: USDA Organic seal used to certify food produced organically.
In terms of animals, organic meat is from livestock that is fed organic feed and raised without routine antibiotic use. The USDA Organic label sometimes adds to the costs of farming practices and the packaging of food products. This cost is also passed to the consumer, often resulting in higher prices than conventional products. But are they all-around better for you? Nutritionally, there’s no significant difference in organic-certified food versus nonorganic-certified food. Organic farming isn’t better or worse than conventional farming; it’s simply a method of farming (see the earlier section “Organic farming is superior” for more).
Free-from labeling
There’s been a rise in “free-from” labeling on packaged foods over the past decade. This in part may be due to increases in food allergy and sensitivities, but it’s often a marketing tactic. As consumers adopt various styles of diets, they may be looking to avoid certain ingredients. For example, a person with celiac disease needs to avoid gluten (although many consumers choose to avoid gluten for no medical reason).
Sometimes the free-from ingredient labeling is useful (such as when someone with an allergy needs to identify certain ingredients in foods). Other times, these labels are misleading. It’s confusing when a label includes a free-from claim for an ingredient that wouldn’t normally be in the food product anyway — for instance, when orange juice is labeled “dairy-free” or “GMO-free.” Orange juice never contained either dairy or any genetically modified ingredients. The simple notion that a product is “free-from” also makes you think that it’s somehow better, or that the ingredient it is free from is “bad” or was removed.
Some food labels are free from so many different things that it may make you wonder, what is it actually? With the trend for gluten-free and dairy-free diets, these claims continue to cover packages. Labels may also include GMO-free, vegan, plant-based, egg-free, or nut-free. Some are just ridiculous, such as gluten-free water or GMO-free gin. Most of these labels are added for marketing purposes and don’t impact the health and safety of the food. But what do all of these free-from labels really mean?
Gluten-free: This voluntary labeling regulated by the FDA means that the food bearing the claim doesn’t contain gluten or any gluten-containing grain.
Dairy-free: While the FDA doesn’t allow false claims on packages, there’s no regulatory definition for the term dairy-free. Ideally, a food with this label wouldn’t contain any dairy products.
GMO-free: This is sometimes misleading when there’s no GMO counterpart for the ingredient in question. For instance, it’s one thing to compare GMO soybean to non-GM soy. But because there’s no GM wheat, it makes no sense to label a wheat product “non-GMO.”
Egg-free: Products containing eggs must be labeled “contains eggs,” but there’s no regulation for the egg-free claim.
Nut-free: This is also an unregulated package claim. While nuts may not be an ingredient in the product, this claim doesn’t mean the product doesn’t contain the allergen, or was not processed in a factory that processes nuts.
Vegan: While this term is clearly defined to mean a product doesn’t contain any ingredients of animal origin (including honey and gelatin), it isn’t regulated by the FDA.
A food allergy occurs when the body’s immune system reacts to certain foods by making antibodies (IgE), and this causes typical allergic symptoms (itching, rashes, hives, swollen lips or tongue, stomach pain, vomiting, diarrhea, wheezing, or trouble breathing).
A food intolerance can cause similar symptoms with digestion but doesn’t cause the immune response. Lactose intolerance (the inability to digest lactose, the sugar in milk), celiac disease (an intolerance to gluten), and Crohn’s disease (an inflammatory bowel disorder that often causes diarrhea) are all examples of food intolerance causes.
Unless you’ve been properly diagnosed by an allergist, there’s no health reason to avoid common allergens. According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, a small fraction of adults and children (almost
