What's In A "Natural" Name

In honor of Valentine's Day this past weekend I thought it fitting to quote some words from Juliette:

What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title.

Many companies know well the power of names. Reportedly Detroit automakers spend hundreds of millions of dollars on focus groups and market research to come up with car names. If an automaker named their new car "dud" how many buyers would they have? Remember how Golden Crisp cereal used to be called Super Sugar Crisp? But in today's world who wants a cereal with super amounts of sugar?

We try to eat healthy and so we are always on the lookout for healthy cereals. We recently bought one that's "organic". In fact, right after the company's name on the box (which has "nature" in it) the topmost word is organic. It's kind of funny to read the list of ingredients because every ingredient is preceded by the word organic (with the exception of sea salt). I guess they're trying to make a point. But they're also trying to use naming conventions to hide a dirty little secret.

The first ingredient, and therefore the single most used, is "Organic rolled oats". Good for them. But the second most used ingredient is "organic evaporated cane juice". Hmm, what could that be? I don't think they're referring to Aunt Bessie's walking cane, but are trying to hide the word sugar from sugar cane! And what happens when you evaporate sugar cane juice? I'm pretty sure you get granulated sugar. Oh, sorry, in this case you get organic granulated sugar. The second largest ingredient is sugar! How healthy does that sound now? Maybe they should have called it Golden Organic cereal.

Marketing professionals love words like natural and organic because we literally eat them up. But we need to see thru the view they are trying to give us. Last time I checked, poison ivy is both natural and organic, but you wouldn't catch me eating it. There are a lot of things that are natural and/or organic that are very bad for us: anthrax, arsenic, botulism, cholera, cyanide, hemlock, radioactivity, ricin, strychnine, etc. On the other hand there are unnatural things that help us to be healthy, such as synthesized medicines. Just because something is natural/unnatural, organic/inorganic, etc., doesn't make it inherently good or bad.

So the next time a company tries to get you to "buy" something by marketing it as natural, organic, etc., just remember what's in a name and stop romanticizing those words. "Henceforth I never will be Romeo."