Often in discussions on the internet I encounter the argument that if something is of natural origin, it is automatically healthier or better. Most of us also think of nature as clean, fair, beautiful and with certain moral rules that generally apply. However, the opposite is unfortunately true - just watch a few videos on the internet and you will lose your illusions very quickly. Because in nature, the law of the fittest applies and natural selection is ruthlessly cruel.
Similarly, in nutrition, it is now fashionable to prefer foods or individual substances with the magic word "natural" on their packaging. In the same way, we are rejecting everything that we are not so familiar with or that is made synthetically. Typical examples of this are so-called 'E's', artificial sweeteners or GMOs. But what if we told you that even the common ascorbic acid, or vitamin C, is one of the 'essentials' and is used as an antioxidant to increase the shelf life of food? Similarly, artificial sweeteners are not as bad as most of the general public thinks, and to date we have virtually no studies that have conclusively proven the harmful effects of genetically modified crops.
This fear of synthetic substances probably also stems from the fact that people tend to fear the unknown - what if there is something hiding in that dark corner after all? What if that evil chemist invented the warfare agent aspartame with the goal of wiping out the world's population? After all, this fact is confirmed by scientific studies that have shown that the biggest opponents of GMOs know the least about this issue.
This problem is not helped by the world's celebrities, including the infamous Gwyneth Paltrow, who claims:
"We are human and the Sun is the Sun - how could it be bad for us? All of us should be exposed to fresh air and sunshine. I don't think anything of natural origin should be bad for us."
The sun may be essential to our lives, but on the other hand, it is also the most common risk factor for melanoma, a skin cancer with a high mortality rate.
In fact, this phenomenon described above is called an appeal to nature (Argumentum ad Naturam) and is one of the well-known argumentative fouls. The fact that something is natural does not tell us anything about whether it is appropriate or healthy for us. If we look into nature, we will find the most potent poisons in the world. An example is botulinum toxin, which is produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum and just a few dozen micrograms can kill a person. Similarly, in the plant kingdom we find a great many poisons that plants produce as a defence against pests and, in fact, against anyone who would want to eat the plant. In other words, nature is waging an active war against humans - even the fruits or agricultural crops that serve us as food are the result of hundreds or thousands of years of deliberate plant cross-breeding and refinement. Is breeding, where we deliberately mix hundreds of genes at once and even change their order in DNA, natural?
In the same way, industrially processed foods are being rejected nowadays, which can be generally agreed with, however, this topic is not black and white either (like almost everything in nutrition). Although we should prefer to eat as little processed food as possible, sometimes the process of industrial food processing can be beneficial. One such example of processing is cooking, which removes harmful bacteria and other microorganisms from food, deactivates thermolabile toxins, and improves the nutrient availability and sensory properties of the resulting food. Similarly, fermentation is one of the industrial processing methods (group 3 according to the NOVA classification) and yet most fermented foods can be described as "healthy" components of our diet. This of course also applies to dairy products, which also undergo some industrial processing (e.g. pasteurization, curdling, etc.) and yet, according to large observational studies, are often associated with lower overall mortality and lower incidence of heart disease in the population.
The opposite example is organic food, which often exploits this argument that everything natural is automatically healthier in its marketing. However, in most cases, you pay extra for the pretty packaging with the "organic" label, because there are generally no major differences between organic and conventional foods in terms of nutritional quality (although of course there are exceptions). Similarly, there is a problem with the use of pesticides in organic foods, where even approved "natural" pesticides can be highly toxic (e.g. rotenone or copper sulphate).
Although nature provides us with many substances with positive effects on the human body, on the other hand, in nature we also find some of the most potent poisons in the world that can kill us very effectively. It is thus pointless to refer to the natural origin of a substance, because this says nothing about its effects on the human body. Similarly, man-made substances or compounds may be harmless or even have health benefits.
Literature
KLÜMPER, Wilhelm; QAIM, Matin. A meta-analysis of the impacts of genetically modified crops. PloS one, 2014, 9.11: e111629.
Philip M. Fernbach, Nicholas Light, Sydney E. Scott, Yoel Inbar, Paul Rozin. Extreme opponents of genetically modified foods know the least but think they know the most. Nature Human Behaviour, 2019; DOI: 10.1038/s41562-018-0520-3
ARNON, Stephen S., et al. Botulinum toxin as a biological weapon: medical and public health management. Jama, 2001, 285.8: 1059-1070.
MARCO, Maria L., et al. Health benefits of fermented foods: microbiota and beyond. Current opinion in biotechnology, 2017, 44: 94-102.
PALA, Valeria, et al. Associations of dairy product consumption with mortality in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)–Italy cohort. The American journal of clinical nutrition, 2019, 110.5: 1220-1230.
DEHGHAN, Mahshid, et al. Association of dairy intake with cardiovascular disease and mortality in 21 countries from five continents (PURE): a prospective cohort study. The Lancet, 2018, 392.10161: 2288-2297.
MAGKOS, Faidon; ARVANITI, Fotini; ZAMPELAS, Antonis. Organic food: nutritious food or food for thought? A review of the evidence. International journal of food sciences and nutrition, 2003, 54.5: 357-371.
Novella, Steven, et al. The Skeptics Guide to the Universe: How to Know Whats Really Real in a World Increasingly Full of Fake. Hodder, 2019.
BAHLAI, Christine A., et al. Choosing organic pesticides over synthetic pesticides may not effectively mitigate environmental risk in soybeans. PloS one, 2010, 5.6.
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