100% Pure, Natural & Wrong

‘All Natural’

‘100% Fruit Juice’

‘No Sugar Added’

‘100% Pure & Natural’

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These arethe slogans that decorate the cartons, jugs and bottles of Tropicana orange juiceproducts. The words are strategically placed next to photographs of succulentoranges and lush greenery. Tropicana is known for an image of a juicy orangepunctured by an old fashioned red and white stripped straw.

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Theseimages and slogans are not mere design features. They are carefully crafted,highly researched selling tools. They are the hard-sought results of fatinvestments; Tropicana’s 2009 campaign, ‘squeeze – its natural’, costapproximately $35 million.

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So, why?Why allocate huge sums of money to a few words plastered on a plastic wrapper?

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The slogans,colours, and images on the orange juice cartons coalesce to create animpression of wholesome, natural-based goodness. It is a scheme that plays onperceptions of what should be healthy and what will be unhealthy. According tothese perceptions, natural necessarily equals good while artificial must bebad. To most of us, there is something comforting about a tanned farmer tillingthe soil under the late afternoon sun, hence the Tropicana catch-phrase ‘100%pure squeezed sunshine’. On the other hand, there is something disconcertingabout the cold, harsh, and sterile labs where artificial food is produced. Whileone seems warm and known, the other is like something out of a Huxley dystopiawhereby racks upon racks of numbered test tubes produce artery clogging ‘food’.

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Byaligning their product with the farmer instead of the test tube, Tropicanasnares our trust and our dollars. In fact, Tropicana is the leading producer and marketer of branded fruitjuices in North America. 

Yet,Tropicana does not own a monopoly on the words ‘purity’ and ‘natural’. Theimage of the untarnished farmer and his fruit feature in a variety ofadvertising campaigns and are at the crux of numerous diet fads, such as thejuice cleanse.  

While 'Natural' seems warm and known, 'Unnatural' reminds us of something out of a Huxley dystopia whereby racks upon racks of numbered test tubes produce artery clogging ‘food’

With therelease of documentaries pushed out by "health and wellness companies", such asFat, Sick and Nearly Dead by Joe Cross, numerous individuals picked up the juicingfad. This fad promised to help followers ‘detoxify’, lose weight, or gethealthy.

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Whileobesity and malnutrition are complex, according to juicing proponents, the fixis simple. Through using a juicing machine that removes the pulp (fiber) fromfresh fruit and vegetables, you can consume more thereby maximizing nutrientintake.

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One of thegreatest juicing evangelists, Jason Vale - aka ‘The Juice Master”- claimedthat juicing helped him overcome severe asthma, psoriasis, eczema and hayfever, in addition to helping him lose weight. Vale also claims that juicinghelps you avoid the “energy-zapping digestive process”, a process that stealsvital energy from other areas.

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Vale is an advocate for the‘juice cleanse’ – simply consuming nothing but water and juice to ‘flush outyour system’, as is endorsed by Beyoncé, Ashton Kutcher and Sarah JessicaParker.

While obesity and malnutrition are complex, according to juicing proponents, the fix is simple.

“Forget three meals a day,”said Tim Jonze, an editor at the Guardian in an article published2013, “All you need is cold-pressed wheatgrass and a pint of liquidised curlykale.”

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This logicwas swallowed whole by a plethora of consumers desperate to gain nutrients andlose pounds. ‘Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead’ was shown on CNN, Netflix and Channel9 Australia.  The documentary was also shown in 600 US cinemas and, in addition to winning several awards, was the official selection of the Sonoma International Film Festival and the 'DeadCenter' film festival. The Facebook page has 334,018 followers and the Twitter page claims to have 30K followers. 

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The popularity of FSND, and other prophets of the juicing age, boosted sales of juicers considerably: by 2015, sales had climbed 71 per cent to $215 million,according to market-research firm NPD Group. A noticeable accomplishment for the "health and wellness" company that released FSND, a company that happens to sell - among other products - juicers.

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Home-pressedjuicing was no longer a ritual singularly practiced by hemp-wearing hippies. Ithad crossed the border and become a custom of the everyday consumer. As juicerssold out across the western hemisphere, juice bars popped up on street cornersand in office buildings where coffee shops had once been. These bars, locatedin prestigious downtown office complexes, provide a blast of simple health inthe form of reduced fruits and vegetables to a slew of lawyers who aresimultaneously working on complex legal briefings.

“Forget three meals a day,” said Tim Jonze, an editor at the Guardian in an article published 2013, “All you need is cold-pressed wheatgrass and a pint of liquidized curly kale.”

Apart fromboth being juice, Tropicana and the juice cleanse have another thing in common:they are both, contrary to belief, unhealthy.

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Tropicana,despite its nostalgic evocation of pure, natural produce, is stocked full ofsugar. At 25g of sugar per 8 oz., Tropicana 100% orange juice has more sugarthan Ben & Jerry’s vanilla ice cream and a Krispy Kreme original glazeddoughnut – according to a report by Credit Suisse.

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The juicecleanse, for all it’s ‘naturalness’, is riddled with problems.  

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“Drinkingfresh pressed juice has benefits – absolutely,” said Danielle Sanders, RD, MScand lead dietitian at FED. “But the thought that it is the magic bullet forhealth is completely misguided.”

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Accordingto Sanders, the reason why people lose weight on a juice cleanse is becausethey are putting themselves on a caloric deficit. Yes, weight loss will result,but weight lose does not mean healthy.

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 “Juicing is not ‘detoxing’ or ‘cleaning out’,we have a liver, spleen, intestines and kidneys for detoxing. These organs willdetox daily, weather the diet is fast food or juices. In fact, in many ways, ajuicing cleanse is the opposite of a ‘detox’".

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A juicecleanse is devoid of the nutrients that the body uses to clean, such as fiber.A juice cleanse is also devoid of protein, so instead the body starts to breakdown muscle tissue to fuel protein-requiring processes (such as the immunesystem, one of the body’s most important “cleaning” processes.)

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The ideathat juicing helps remove the “energy zapping digestive process” is also wrong.According to Sanders, our digestive organs – liver, pancreas, stomach andintestines – are designed to digest. The idea that they steal energy, therebymaking one tired, is absurd.

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So, why?Why are consumers so willing to buy into the juicing cleanse? Why did Tropicanaorange juice become a staple of the healthy breakfast?

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Theanswer: the appeal to nature.

That which is natural, is good.N is natural.Therefore, N is good or right.

That which is unnatural, is bad orwrong.U is unnatural.Therefore, U is bad or wrong.

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In otherwords, the ‘appeal to nature’ is wrong because it makes a faulty assumption:natural = good, unnatural = bad. Yet, whether something is natural rarelymatters.

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In fact,the word ‘natural’ is perhaps more of a buzz word than a meaningful noun. TheUS Food & Drug Administration (FDA), the regulatory body that oversees thehome of Tropicana, broadly defines ‘natural’. The FDA “considers theterm ‘natural’ to mean that nothing artificial or synthetic has been includedin, or has been added to, a food that would not normally be expected to be inthat food’. However, this definition does not address food processing ormanufacturing methods and, tellingly, does not “consider whether the term“natural” should describe any nutritional or other health benefit.”

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That theFDA refuses to define natural as healthy is deliberate. Heroine, cyanideand the death cap mushroom are natural products. On the other hand, Golden Rice,a GE crop fortified with vitamin A to fight deficiencies resulting in theestimated death of 670,000 children, is unnatural. One group will lead to painreduction and a substantially longer life, the other will result in thedecomposition of vital organs and agonizing death.

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Of course,the appeal to nature is founded in a generalization that can often be helpfulto many seeking a healthy diet. This generalization argues that, when in doubt,‘Eat Real Food’. It comes in a variety of ways such as stick to the ‘peripheryof the grocery store’. For the most part, this isn’t bad advice. Fresh fruitand vegetables from the periphery of the grocery store are, in general, betterthan the sugar and butter packed Oreos found in the center isles.

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However, 'Eat Real Food' is a generalization not a rule. Assuch, ‘natural’ should not transcend this general rule and become a synonym for‘healthy’. Doing so only allowsmarketers to manipulate consumers, choosing to plaster ‘natural’ and othersimilar words on its products, thereby convincing consumers that their productis actually healthy.

However, 'Eat Real Food' is a generalization not a rule. As such, ‘natural’ should not transcend this general rule and become a synonym for ‘healthy’.

In otherwords, whether a product is natural should not be the be-all-and-end-allevidence for why something is healthy. In fact, there is no simple answer towhat is and what isn’t healthy. While there are general rules, diet is highlypersonalized and seeking out a healthy diet is not a task for the lazy.

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“To definewhat is healthy, we would have to point out many parameters,” said Sanders. “Thesewould include frequency and quantity of consumption, age, lifestyle, health history,and health status. Each parameter changes based on the individual.”

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Yet,marketers, desperate to sell you their newest product, would have you believeotherwise. Through packing a product with attractive words such as ‘natural’,they appeal to our temptation to find the simple solution, once and for all.

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We wouldall be wise to remember the central tenet of toxicology: “the dose makes thepoison”. Practically anything, from oranges to vegetables, can be harmful inthe right quantities – regardless of how ‘natural’ it might be. Perhaps a tenetof consumption in our confusing landscape should elaborate on toxicology’s:“the dose, combined with consumer ignorance and fat-money marketing, makes thepoison.”