|
Natural Reflections
What does the word “natural” really stand for?
By Gene Sager
Recently, I have been reflecting on the meaning and
use of the ubiquitous (at least in marketing) word “natural.”
Word Abuse
My research on natural and green products includes
trips to the local supermarket where I read labels and packages, taking
copious notes as I stand in the aisles. Sympathetic female shoppers stop and
ask if I need help. I do present a pathetic image, I suppose, as I puzzle
over the promising claims on the packages. This is at once a dead serious
topic (including crucial health and environmental issues) and an amusing
investigation because devious or outlandish claims abound.
Most puzzling on a recent trip to the market was a
cheese snack product “Made With All Natural Oil.” I read the long list of
ingredients and found they include “partially hydrogenated soybean oil” – an
extraordinarily unnatural oil and an ingredient many doctors tell us to
avoid in any amount. I called the company’s “nutrition expert” to inquire
about the discrepancy. The reply was quick and confident: The hydrogenated
oil is in the seasoning, not in the cheese curls themselves. I objected that
the seasoning and the cheese curls are one – there is no separate packet for
seasoning. The seasoning is cooked in. The expert held steadfast to the
cheese curls and seasoning distinction, and so ended the conversation.
A fascinating category of foods today is the
energy/health bar. Filled with fruits and nuts, these are touted as “natural
snacks” but any random check of the ingredients reveals that most of the
fruit used is not organic. I take it for granted that non-organic fruit is
not natural because most pesticides and herbicides are not natural. These
poisons remain in the fruit, so we should not call these energy bars
“natural.” Meanwhile, marketeers engage in tokenism, taking the lack of
preservatives as sufficient to warrant the label “natural.” What is worse,
many of the fruits used in these bars are members of the notorious “dirty
dozen gang” – the twelve foods that are most dangerous if not organic. For
example, non-organic apples, cherries, and strawberries are health hazards.
Now, lest I be dismissed as an inveterate complainer,
I assure you that some uses of this overused and abused word meet with my
approval. Take, for instance, the name of a local landscape company called
“Natural Landscapes.” They use only native organic plants, locally grown. In
my area, this means live oak trees and buckwheat. Instead of thirsty
grasses, this company uses ground covers like manzanita and sages. Native
plants fit the ecosystem: the weather, the soil, the rocks, the birds,
insects, and animals. In this instance, “natural” means “in harmony with
Nature.”
So let’s test out the notions
of “natural” and “in harmony with Nature.” As they stand, these words are
far too vague. They need to be worked out in specifics – in various kinds of
living conditions, products, and in the activities of daily life. We should
not hesitate to criticize phony or impractical ideas of the natural life.
Natural Meat
Amid the multifarious uses of the poor word
“natural,” the claims made for foods are arguably the most common and the
most important. While most food ads and labels remain unregulated, the
United States Department of Agriculture has established an official label to
designate certain meat as natural: It must be free of artificial colors,
flavors, sweeteners, and preservatives, and “only minimally processed.”
Although the “minimally processed” term has no teeth
since it is too vague, the prohibition of additives like artificial colors
and preservatives is clear enough. What is also clear is the omission of all
reference as to how the animal was raised: What was the animal fed? Were its
natural instincts suppressed? Most beef cattle in North America are
subjected to confinement in feedlots where they are fed grains and given
antibiotics. Many will have been given growth hormones. But the antibiotics
and hormones are retained in the meat that can bear the label “natural.”
Ruminant animals like cattle do not naturally eat grain; it upsets their
stomachs. It goes against their nature to stand in a cramped feedlot for
months.
If “natural” means “in harmony with nature,” beef
production raises a host of serious health and environmental issues. Are the
grass and grain organic? How much water does beef production take from our
supplies? How can we produce natural meat from such an unnatural process? No
wonder the Union of Concerned Scientists lists the USDA label “Natural Meat”
in their “Buyer Beware” category.
One lesson to be learned here is that we are still
thinking of the world and our food in a bit-by-bit, piecemeal fashion. We
have heard it said that all things in Nature are interrelated, but we still
think of the animal feed as one thing and the beef patty as a separate item.
The cheese curls are one thing and the seasoning another. The “natural
spring water” is one thing and the handy plastic water bottle is another.
Urban Makeover
Issues about the term
“natural” are not limited to products and services. The natural life is a
way of living, a lifestyle, our daily activities. It is sometimes
stereotyped as a return to a primitive life, and critics of naturalism
challenge us by saying, “If you are so into living a natural life, why don’t
you move to a cabin in the woods or live like the Amish?” Actually this
primitive image of naturalness is quite unrealistic and would distract those
in the natural living movement from their contemporary goals.
The primitive image assumes that technology is
suspect, and it assumes that city life cannot be natural. These assumptions
are misleading, if not flatly false. It is our nature as human beings to
invent and use tools. Today, technology is a mixed bag – some useful and
relatively safe, some wasteful and dangerous. Discretion is called for. Some
technology can be produced so that its contribution outweighs its negative
environmental impact. Computers and mass transit tech are two examples. The
natural life today involves electronic networks to inform and coordinate
efforts to preserve the natural environment. The new mass transit is high
tech and far superior to car culture, which is an obsessive way of life
based on highly inefficient gas-fired boxes mostly used by just one humanoid
at a time.
Advocates of the primitive way of life, on the other
hand, assume that life in the city cannot be natural. This image of the city
has it filled with asphalt and cement, noisy, crowded, and polluted.
Apartments, condos, and houses are crammed together with little or no green
space. But this picture obscures the differences among cities and the
natural possibilities within a given city. From changes in air quality to
the proximity of parks and other green areas, there are urban variations,
and the natural life is within the grasp of a well-informed, resourceful
urbanite.
Here are a few guidelines to illustrate the range of
challenges and choices we have in living naturally in the city: (1) Be wary
of dwellings controlled by associations, landlords, or others who prevent
you from installing solar, composting, and other “natural” activities. (2)
Walking is key to the natural life. A good case scenario is a dwelling
within walking distance of a park, mass transit, and a grocery store. A walk
or jog in a park or other green area is exercise and a Nature exposure;
domesticated Nature is Nature nonetheless. (3) Sometimes ecological links
involve political links. In the city where I live, we had to go through our
city council to put pressure on the city council of the neighboring city in
order to rid our streams of pesticides that were leaching in from the
neighboring town.
When we get beyond the separate bit-by-bit mentality,
we learn to deal with multidimensional issues and with large regional
issues, even global issues. The natural life today is natural in a new key:
to act in harmony with Nature, we need to take a well-informed, consciously
conservationist approach. I have emphasized the ideas of “well-informed” and
“consciously.” In a sense, we have become watchdogs on guard against greedy
corporations, sluggish governments, and a public manipulated by marketeers
and the media. All this requires constant vigilance and effort.
Coming Home
The word “natural” sometimes implies “spontaneous” or
“relaxed.” But if we must always be on guard against phony naturalness, it
seems as if we can enjoy no relaxed respite from the hectic task of
protecting the environment.
Most of us have read the results of research which
shows that our mere presence in a natural setting can reduce stress and even
foster recovery from illness. The positive influence is double if we attend
to our surroundings and appreciate them. Unhurried, conscious experience of
Nature can bring relief from stressful dealings with people. Nature
fascinates, soothes, and calms us. This is true even though Nature has the
potential to disturb or destroy our lives as in a violent storm or
earthquake. So Nature is not so much beneficent as awesome and mysterious.
It supports our lives and we feel a deep affinity with it.
The occasional outing to National Parks and places
with amazing panoramic views is not the only sort of natural setting
experience. Many cities have green areas including residential streets that
invite an experience of Nature, albeit domesticated Nature. But the most
influential Nature experience may well be our own homes. Pots and plant
boxes can grow flowers and vegetables. And don’t hire out the yard work –
not even to the Natural Landscapes company mentioned above. Landscape
experts may be consulted, but we should do the work ourselves. One of the
urban tragedies I witness on my daily walks is the hired gardener who comes
to work tending the plants while the resident fires up her SUV and drives
off to the fitness center for exercise!
Experience in Nature begins at home, and, in a deeper
sense, Nature is our home. Communion with Mother Nature is a spiritual
experience in which we become aware of our deep roots, our connectedness
with all things. Thus the natural life attains a balance between the
challenges of environmental vigilance on the one hand and communion with
Nature on the other. A veteran greenie once told me, “You can’t say you
really love your mother unless you visit her every day.”
Learn More
The Nature Principle by Richard Louv (Algonquin
Books, 2011)
Sharing Nature With Children 20th Anniversary Edition
by Joseph Bharat Cornell (Dawn Publications, 1998)
The Thunder Tree: Lessons from an Urban Wildland by
Robert Michael Pyle (Oregon State University Press, 2011)
Coyote's Guide to Connecting with Nature by Jon
Young, Evan McGown, Ellen Haas (Owlink Media, 2010)
The Green Marketing Manifesto by John Grant (Wiley,
2008)
Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design With Nature by
Douglas Farr (Wiley, 2007)
“Greenwash: When the green is just veneer” by Wendy
Priesnitz in Natural Life Magazine, May/June 2008
Gene Sager is Professor of
Environmental Ethics at Palomar College in San Marcos, California.
| 
