What's in that?
Posted by by Bea James, senior manager of organic, natural and sustainable programs
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Ever pick up a product and read the ingredient label and ask yourself “what is that and should I eat something I can’t pronounce?” If I put all the food labels that I have read over the years onto pages it would be the equivalent of reading War and Peace about 20 times. I have to admit that I actually enjoy reading food labels. I enjoy it so much that I have kept track of all the acceptable and unacceptable ingredients over the years and used that as the base for writing Lunds and Byerly’s Guide to Natural Food Standards.
Ten years ago I developed this guide to help everyone in our company that buys or develops products that go on our shelves know the difference between natural and ‘fake’ natural. Our standards guarantee that if we say it’s natural, it’s really natural according to our strict standards. NO to preservatives, artificial food coloring, high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, MSG and artificial colors and flavors are just a few of the promises we make in our definition of natural foods. My general rule is that if you don’t recognize an ingredient as food it’s probably not, and if it’s not it goes into our list of unacceptable ingredients for our natural standards.
The USDA and the FDA do not have a definition of natural. It’s pretty much a free for all when it comes to that term and any manufacturer can use it and not mean it. All of the natural and organic food products in our natural and organic food sets have been screened by our trained staff to make sure they are natural according to our standards.
So let us take the guess work out of label reading for you. Just look for our all natural logo throughout the store for the real deal on natural ingredients.