Skip to main content

The idea that more natural food – food which hasn’t been transformed by human and industrial intervention – is best for us is a powerful one. Psychologists have found a strong preference for that which is “natural”, even when people differ in what they understand that term to mean. But naturalness is a muddle – we are often signalled by advertising to see heavily manufactured foods as “natural”; the pioneers of cereal manufacturing were the greatest advocates of “natural” food in the early 20th century; and it’s rare that crops, which have been manipulated by human breeding over millennia, are seen as “unnatural”.

If naturalness is a slippery idea, though, it is still undeniably compelling. At the moment, nowhere is the preference for naturalness when it comes to the food we eat more prevalent than in concerns expressed over ultra-processed foods (UPFs). But does the idea that naturalness is inherently best set up a misleading dichotomy between nature and technology that doesn’t serve the interests of a more sustainable and equitable food future? Does a narrow focus on processing itself misplace bigger questions of power and agency on the one hand, and unhelpfully dismiss scientific techniques on the other? We explore these questions in our latest explainer, Nature Knows Best? Naturalness in the Ultra-Processed Foods Debate.

https://www.doi.org/10.56661/f76228c7

Listen to the explainer read aloud by author Hester van Hensbergen.

 
Summary
Defining UPFs
UPFs as a Code for Naturalness
Unnatural Eating? Textures, Flavours, and Additives
Naturalness Displaced? Corporate Power and Infant Formula
Conclusion
Footnotes
Image
A flyer for the new explainer from TABLE called "Nature Knows Best? Naturalness in the Ultra-Processed Foods Debate" by Hester van Hensbergen with an image of an egg carton with one blue egg.
Hester van Hensbergen