Everything You Think You Know About "Natural Food" is Wrong

Last month, the ice cream giant Ben & Jerry's seemingly took a fall from grace. Long regarded as a progressive ice cream producer and a lover of social advocacy and jam bands (as if they had an option, they are based in Vermont), Ben & Jerry's took a step backward and admitted that their widely consumed ice cream was not quite as natural as once advertised. Once all of their cartons read "All Natural" but those days are numbered, as the Center for Science in the Public Interest put the pressure on B&J's last month regarding the liberal use of "all natural."

The CSPI argued that if products contain alkalized cocoa, corn syrup, hydrogenated oil or other ingredients that are anything but natural (all of which are contained in some of the Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavors). Ben & Jerry's (once owned by the real folksy team of Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, but now is a part of the Unilever food behemoth) agreed with the criticism, and instead of changing the recipe to earn the "all natural" title, is just dropping the bit of marketing lingo to avoid any more controversy.

Now no one really wants to pick on Ben & Jerry's (as they remain somewhat of a favorite of the sugar-addled and those plagued with a chronic case of unyielding munchies) and their exit from the "all natural" claim was, while not entirely graceful, somewhat commendable. But this latest controversy is just a mere stumble in the longer, more injurious plunge from the ideal of natural to the more manufactured and artificial reality.