Natural Vs Organic: What's The Difference Between These Two Food Labels?

With so many food labels on store-bought products, it can be difficult to discern the differences between them. The general belief is that organic food in the U.S. is healthier than inorganic, but what does that really mean? And how do organic ingredients differ from all-natural ingredients? It turns out these terms are actually referring to two completely separate things.

Think of it this way: The organic label applies to foods before they have been harvested, while the natural label applies to foods after they've been harvested. So, if you have a bag of trail mix made with organic fruit and nuts, it means that these foods earned that label due to how they were planted, grown, and picked. If the trail mix is also labeled as a natural food, it means that after those fruits and nuts were grown and harvested, the trail mix was not made with any additional ingredients such as preservatives, artificial colors, or artificial flavors such as blue raspberry.

Organic food is labeled as such due to how it's grown. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in order for food in the United States to be labeled organic, it must be grown on soil that hasn't been treated with any restricted substances (such as synthetic fertilizers and pesticides) in the last three years leading up to the food's harvest. For meat to be labeled as organic, guidelines must be followed regarding diet and how the meat is raised: Animals must be fed all-organic food, given zero hormones or antibiotics, and raised in living conditions that reflect what the USDA calls the animals' "natural behaviors" (think grass-fed cows instead of grain-fed).

Some foods are 100% organic, meaning they follow the above guidelines, while others are labeled as "made with organic ingredients." The latter term means that of the ingredients within the product — think back to the bag of trail mix with all of its different elements — at least 70% of those ingredients are fully organic. If less than 70% of the product's ingredients are organic, only those specific ingredients can be labeled organic; no blanket organic terms can be used on the packaging.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has addressed the term "natural," but the FDA's guidelines around the term are a little more ambiguous than the USDA's organic guidelines. This includes the FDA noting that it doesn't have a formal definition for the term, but instead a "longstanding policy concerning the use of 'natural' in human food labeling." That said, according to the FDA, "natural" means that "nothing artificial or synthetic... has been included in, or has been added to, a food that would not normally be expected to be in that food." This could include preservatives, colors, and flavors, for example. It doesn't cover food processing methods such as pasteurization, a neccesary process that strips dangers from raw milk.

When it comes to the difference between organic and natural, think of organic as a label for the pre-harvest phase and natural as a label for the post-harvest phase. When it comes to purchasing one over the other, the decision is ultimately yours. However, the term "organic" has a much more hard-and-fast definition in the U.S. food space than "natural," so there is less room for error when understanding how organic food was produced.