We all see it on packages every day, from food to herbal supplements to beauty products: All-natural! Organic ingredients! No preservatives! No artificial flavors or colors! No chemical additives! The message, stated explicitly or just implied, is simple: Natural products are good for you; artificial chemicals are bad for you.

This is the standard line from proponents of naturopathy, herbal remedies, and all-natural supplements. For example, Chris Kilham, self-proclaimed "traditional, plant-based Medicine Hunter" says that “My goal is to have more people using safe, effective, proven, healthful herbs, and fewer people using toxic, overly expensive, marginally effective, potentially lethal pharmaceutical drugs.” Or there's this book: Natural Cures and Gentle Medicines That Work Better Than Dangerous Drugs or Risky Surgery. Or these folks, who ask "If you knew natural ingredients and natural remedies would solve your health problems and do it without harmful side effects.. Why would you ever want to use harmful drugs that have many negative side-effects?"

These are major, widely-held misconceptions... that "natural" substances are inherently good and "healthy," while "unnatural" substances are obviously "bad" and "unhealthy."

In this post, I just want to quickly tackle the concept that "natural things are obviously healthy" -- the idea that the "All Natural!" logo on your potato chip bag, or orange juice carton, or herbal supplement bottle obviously means "good!"



I think most people will admit, if they think about it for a moment, that just because something comes from "nature" doesn't mean it's going to automatically be healthy and wonderful. The natural world is absolutely FULL of "natural" ingredients that will kill you or at least ruin your day: cyanide, strychnine, arsenic, hemlock, cocaine, opium, most mushrooms, "poison" oak/ivy... Even plants we regularly cultivate for food are chock-full of toxic poisons: the foliage from tomatoes and potatoes, the berries of asparagus, the leaves of rhubarb, the seeds of apples. And all those examples were just a sampling of poisonous vegetation -- we're not even getting into the "all-natural" poisons found in animals or insects or microorganisms....

The temptation, then, is to think of natural substances in two distinct categories: harmful or helpful. Those that will poison you (cyanide, strychnine...), and those that make you healthy (vitamins or antioxidants, for example). But even this is a vast oversimplification of how things work in nature. Even essential nutrients like vitamins -- some of which we must consume to survive -- are toxic at the wrong levels, or to the wrong person at the wrong time.  Too much potassium leads to dangerous heart palpitations. Too much fiber can actually cause constipation and serious intestinal blockages, rather than relieve it. Overdosing on various vitamins can lead to nerve damage, liver failure, osteoporosis, skin problems, hair loss, dehydration, vomiting, birth defects... etc etc. (Here are some great resources for checking the side effects of many herbs, supplements, and vitamins.)

On the other hand, even the deadliest poisons can be helpful or life-saving, if given to the right person, at the right time, in just the right dose. Cyanide, for example, can be used to rapidly lower someone's blood pressure in an emergency medical situation. Strychnine (in tiny doses) was formerly used as a laxative and for other stomach ailments. Hemlock has been used as a sedative (though the line between the dose of hemlock that would induce "sedation" and one that would induce "death" is very narrow...).

My point in discussing all of these examples ad nauseum is this: "all-natural" substances can't be put into black and white categories! They are a million shades of grey, with varying good and bad effects depending on the body's needs at a given moment. In fact, our bodies are so massively complex, with intricately intertwined systems, that it's actually incredibly difficult for anything to be 100% bad or 100% good. Clearly, just because something is "all-natural" doesn't necessarily make it good for you! 


And that's why those "all-natural" labels drive me crazy. Sure, they're just an advertising gimmick. But they are a glimpse into the mindset of the average American shopper -- that those "all-natural" products somehow have an inherent advantage over the other products with their preservatives and "artificial chemicals."

In this post, I wanted to lay some basic groundwork by showing that all-natural doesn't mean all-good. Of course, you may still be thinking to yourself... ok, maybe all-natural substances aren't all good... but surely they're better than un-natural, man-made substances!  Next, I'll tackle this distinction between "natural" and "artificial"... how different are they, really? Check back for the answer. Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.