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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

>Here, the FDA is allowing for so-called natural dyes which are just chemicals that have been extracted from plants (usually through solvents). Imagine taking the turmeric, soaking it in gasoline, then distilling the color back out of the gasoline.

That's basically what's done for vegetable oils so should vegetable oils be called "artificial" as well? Is there a principled way of defining what amount of scary chemical involvement is needed for something natural to lose its "natural" designation? Are pretzels at risk because they're dipped in lye (ie. drain cleaners)?

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I don't know the answer to your question, but it would seem no one involved in this decision making process is even trying.

Well I don't think there's anything dangerous about artificial or natural dyes. I certainly don't think you should have to put a warning label saying "dyes extracted with gasoline" on products using natural dyes.

At the same time, you shouldn't be able to lie to consumers (even if what those consumers care about is wrong and dumb)! You shouldn't be able to label with "This milk from cows not treated with rBST" if you did in fact treat the cows with rBST, even though rBST is not a health risk. Likewise, you shouldn't be able to say "my product is completely natural" when it is in fact produced through chemical synthesis.

I believe if you’re using hexane to extract the vegetable oils it should definitely be called artificial. A highly artificial substance was added to the food at some point.

Lye is typically not artificial if it’s made from sea shells and wood ash like it has been traditionally. Even the industrial chlor-alkali process just uses salt (NaCl) and water so it’s not artificial.

To point out how confusing this is: If you add a knife tip to a cow carcass to extract the steak, that is adding a highly artificial substance to the food at some point.

Likewise if you use steel balls to tumble-crush shells into calcium carbonate powder (don't know if they do, or if it's even a product, but neither are the point here).

"We are required to inform this table that your naturally wild-caught salmon had, briefly, at one time, a small hook inserted into its mouth. It was otherwise wholly without artificial feed nor other additives."

How do you write a law that slices between those ideas and hexane, clearly?

On a case by case basis that generally aligns with common sense. Most people can instantly recognize a hook and knife are very different from adding a solvent to food. Drug laws are a good analog for this. I don’t think the universe of possibilities in this space is prohibitively large.

You can probably begin by broadly calling petroleum and petroleum products artificial.

There's a rich heritage and history of solvent-based foods. Vanilla essence, sloe gin, etc.

Ethanol would probably be classified as a natural solvent. The edge cases fall off very quickly, this can definitely be done on case by case basis without introducing onerous bureaucracy.

Even if it were distilled from petroleum?

Ethanol is not distilled from petroleum. Industrially it is produced by distilling plant sugars and starches.

It can be distilled from petroleum, and there is the key distinction that wasn't answered - are "natural" ingredients ones that could be made by "natural" (I'm assuming that "biochemical" is meant here) processes, or are they ones that are made by "natural" processes? Or is it just petroleum that is the problem?

Where does salt fall here?

Why isn't petroleum natural, when it is plant-based?

A good starting point would be to broadly classify petroleum and its products as artificial.

Apologies for so many questions, this is a very interesting line of reasoning.

What makes petroleum artificial compared to any other substance found on (or in) earth?

It seems you are proposing that "any food that has had a petroleum product added to it at any stage is artificial", which is an oddly narrow focus.

For that matter, does this definition of "artificial" extend to the range of substances that can be synthesized with bio-feedstock?

To expand on our discussion, would this mean that ethanol made other feedstock is natural, but made from petroleum is artificial?

>Lye is typically not artificial if it’s made from sea shells and wood ash like it has been traditionally.

There's approximately 0% chance that the typical pretzel you bought is made with dye derived from wood ash.

Well yeah but I addressed how it’s made industrially as well.

>Even the industrial chlor-alkali process just uses salt (NaCl) and water so it’s not artificial.

By that standard is anything artificial? Oil comes out of the ground, after all. At least with "natural" colors you can argue the actual molecule was synthesized by a plant and we're just purifying it, whereas for industrially produced lye it's entirely man made.

Salt and water are pretty “natural”. You can get pedantic about this but there is enough here to classify these on a case by case basis.

Can you define a "highly artifical substance" in this context? As you desctibe it, it seems to be "a subtance that can't be made entirely from feedstock that was once living".

Why is a solvent that is part of processing but nonexistent in the final product something that anyone should care about?

Your body cannot tell the difference between a chemical that is "naturally" sourced vs one that is "artificially" sourced. We are at a point in industrial chemistry that the sole difference is "Did the feedstock come from a petrochemical company"

>Why is a solvent that is part of processing but nonexistent in the final product something that anyone should care about?

That's exactly my point, because I'm arguing there's no difference between natural colors and vegetable oil, when they're both refined from natural sources using industrial processes.

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