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The national boom in fresh-from-the-factory natural foods shows no signs of abating. There is hardly a department of any supermarket that does not offer some sort of comestible with "nature" or "natural" on the label. Hershey's Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips boasts "all natural ingredients." Snyder's of Hanover pretzels are said to be natural, as though just plucked off the old pretzel tree. Mrs. Paul's French Fried Onion Rings? "Only from natural fresh sliced onions." Ice cream may be a man-made culinary artifact, but here comes Schrafft's Light "all natural ice milk." Beer making may entail an intricate legacy of culture and chemistry, but there goes Anheuser-Busch Natural Light beer. Arnold's now puts out a Nature1 bread, Kraft's a natural cheddar cheese, Heinz a natural vinegar. Mrs. Smith's Bake and Serve Pie may contain artificial color and flavor, monoglycerides, diglycerides and the antioxidant BHA, but it also includes, or so the label says, "natural juice" apple. The phrase inevitably provokes a question: Where to find any perfectly natural commercial fruit? The answer, of course, is that almost all agricultural products since the heyday of Luther Burbank are hybrids that were developed or improved by state agricultural departments. An apple today is not necessarily natural just because man has not yet made it square—like the tomato.
These promiscuous claims of naturalness have become something of an embarrassment to people who are supposed to know what they mean. Says Jules Rose, board chairman of Sloan's Supermarkets: "The term natural foods drives me crazy because no one has come up with the right definition." The Federal Trade Commission's Consumer Protection Bureau has more or less evaded the issue by relying on a definition of naturalness that boils down to "minimally processed"—that is, food unchanged except by cutting, grinding, drying or pulping. This elastic notion may be comfortable for merchandisers but possibly help preserve a clear cannot sense of what is natural.
Nowhere does the idea take a more gratuitous bruising than in the to of cosmetics. Ever since the 1960s, when hostility to technology began turning the so-called natural look into a hot advertising gambit, the cosmetics industry has been overworking its overripe imagination to convince customers that naturalness is to be had only through the use of ointments, lotions, tints and other exotic stuffs. Gillette's "new FOHO — For Oily Hair Only —system" all but ineluctably boasts "natural ingredients." Jojoba oil is plugged as "nature's own deep moisturizing formula from the legendary desert plant." The epitome of the natural cosmetics notion must be a product called Natural Image by Granny's Girl: "all-natural, grown-up cosmetics especially for little girls! Blushers, Lip Glosses and Eyeshadows that give gentle hints of color, shine and scent ..." What is easily forgotten under the enchantment of such copy is the unadorned fact that cosmetics exist entirely as interventions against natural appearances.