Why Natural Isn’t Always Healthier — Registered Dietitian Columbia SC

Take the example of fluoride, a mineral currently in the news because some are claiming it lowers IQ and causes cancer (spoiler: it doesn’t). Unfortunately, these claims are leading some towns to stop fluoridating their public water supply, a move that will have a huge impact on lower income people who don’t have access to dental care. While these claims are thoroughly debunked and water fluoridation is considered one of the biggest modern public health successes (DYK that dental caries have historically been one of the leading causes of death?), it’s easy the believe fluoridation is bad because it feels unnatural to pump our water supply full of something with a hard to spell name (I’ve been autocorrected 4 times already typing this paragraph – the u before o gets me every time). And yet, fluoride is a mineral, one that is naturally found in water in higher or lower concentrations depending on where someone lives. The benefits of fluoride for dental health were discovered after noticing the low rates of dental caries around CO Springs, an area that had much higher levels of fluoride in their drinking water than what’s added to public drinking water today. So why is fluoride in drinking water thought of as unnatural when it’s already present, and in high levels in some places? Many people, including the same people who are pushing the fluoride myth, are more than happy to supplement nutrients they aren’t getting enough of – how is adding fluoride to drinking water any different? How is fluoridation any less natural than adding a pinch of salt to water?

Another issue with categorizing natural: what we think of as natural is always in relationship to where we are in history – not to mention our geographic location. Things we think of as natural today would look positively futuristic to people from earlier times, Just think, once upon a time cooking food was a new invention, an “unnatural” shift in food preparation. And yet it helped us unlock and digest more of the nutrients in food, made eating a lot safer, and may have even helped us evolve to have bigger brains!

You might be reading this and thinking “oh come on Rachael, you know what we mean when we talk about natural food.” Maybe?? I certainly know most people consider fresh, one-ingredient foods to be natural, and I agree that in an ideal world, these would be the backbone of a healthy eating pattern. But beyond that it gets confusing.

The NOVA food classification system was designed to categorize foods based on degree of processing, and is most commonly cited in determining what counts as an “ultra-processed” food. There are a lot of inconsistencies because the categorization system is super arbitrary. It uses the totally random number of 5 ingredients as a cutoff, and the presence of certain additives/ingredients that are completely safe can push foods into a higher level of processing. Many foods categorized as ultra-processed are also valuable sources of nutrition, at least, for those of us without a private chef. This is especially true for anyone with allergies or other medically necessary food restrictions. For example, many whole grain cereals, crackers, and breads that are accessible and kid-friendly sources of whole grain? Ultraprocessed. That tasty salad dressing that makes you actually want to eat a big bowl of veggies? Ultraprocessed. The gluten free snack foods that allow someone with celiac disease to actually, ya know, eat? Ultraprocessed.

This might seem silly, but there is real harm that is done, especially to lower income people who may not have the time or money to cook fresh, whole foods as often as they’d like, when we demonize ultra-processed foods. There’s a big difference in promoting more fresh foods versus demonizing foods with too many ingredients or an ingredient with a long name.