How To Understand What “Natural” Really Means

The word ‘natural’ does not always mean what it sounds like. Unfortunately, it can be used by companies to engage in “greenwashing”, which is essentially using nice-sounding words to make a product sound more “green” or “natural” than it actually is. Read on to learn how to understand what it means for an ingredient to be natural, and what implications that has for its’ safety.

There are different “levels” of natural

Something I’ve realized is that there is a lot of misinterpretation in regards to what is considered natural. There is NOT one definition of natural, and it definitely means different things to different people. Companies can use the term ‘natural’ to describe their products without having to actually meet any kind of established guidelines.

If someone asks me “Is this natural?”, the answer is not always black and white.

What I’ve come to understand, and what I think people need to understand when it comes to finding natural products, is that there are different levels of ‘natural’. Many, many ingredients could be described as natural, even though they may have undergone so much processing that they are very different from the original source they came from.

Natural ingredients rated on a scale from 1-5

The best way I can explain what natural ingredients really are, is to think of them as being rated on a scale from 1- 5. Level one being ingredients that have undergone limited processing and are easily recognizable. Examples of this would be things like: coconut oil, raw shea butter, and baking soda. In general, these are typically the safest and most “non-toxic” ingredients. Products with these ingredients can often be made at home too!

And then on the other end of the scale, ingredients rated a 5, would be things that were originally extracted from a natural source, but highly refined and processed to arrive at a very specific compound. Or another example would be ingredients that are naturally-derived and are chemically combined with another ingredient to create a new substance. Possible examples of ingredients that might be a level 5 are: Behenamidopropyl dimethylamine, Sodium Cocoyl Glutamate, Polyglycerin-3, and natural flavour. These ingredients often sound scary, but aren’t necessarily harmful. They aren’t necessarily non-toxic or safe either.

Ingredients that fall somewhere in the middle, rated a 2-3, might be things like: Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride, Coco Glucoside, and Glyceryl Stearate Citrate. They are typically considered non-toxic, thought there might be some concerns with them such as ingredient contamination (the ingredient itself is not harmful, but it might be contaminated with harmful substances during manufacturing or processing), or bioaccumulation (the substance might accumulate in the environment, rather than quickly biodegrading, which may result in harm to the environment).

Please note that I am not a chemist, and the exact level of chemical processing that a specific ingredient undergoes is not something I would know or understand fully, though I do my best to be accurate.

Minimally processed is really the most natural

As you can probably now understand, this is why ‘natural’ ingredients are not black and white. When I recommend products to people, I like to be as natural as possible, which to me means, as minimally processed as possible. These are the ingredients that are well-known to be safe, biodegradable, easily accessible, and not controversial. But having ingredients strictly from the ‘level 1 category’ I describe above is hard to find and not always possible.

This concept of ingredients having different levels of processing (and thus different levels of “natural”) applies to food as well! We are always told to avoid processed food, but many, many things are processed. What we mean when we say this is to avoid highly processed food.

If any of this has you overwhelmed, the good news is that you don’t have to know all of this information yourself. You can rely on me to know it for you, and explain it the best I can! I hope that learning my concept of natural products having different levels of “natural” helps you to understand what makes one natural product better than another, and how I select the best of the best when it comes to natural, non-toxic products.

So now I’d like to ask you, how natural are your natural products? 😉