Do 'Natural' And 'Botanical' Mean Safer?

Los Angeles Times:

Containing substances such as neem tree oil and leaf or bark extract, cinnamon oil, chamomile and calendula, these products may indeed send Johnny or Janey off to school smelling fresh as daisy patches, but we continue to wonder why the words "natural" and "botanical" are so often read as de facto safer.

Read the whole story: Los Angeles Times

Comments

[VicDaring]

Artificial - Asprin

Natural - Rattlesnake venom

You tell me.

[bmonaghan]

I once worked for an "all-natural" supplement company, and it used to strike me as completely arbitrary. For example, there is an "all natural" vitamin B - but there is also a synthetic produced vitamin B that essentially a much better compound because your body absorbs it more efficiently and makes better use of it - so you're not just flushing it out. Yet by using it, we would lose our "all natural" nomenclature. So we didn't. I never understood the whole "all natural craze" - at least in the supplement industry. If you want something all natural, basically a food, and you want it for health reasons you shouldn't be taking supplements anyway but drinking herbal infusions like at http://www.homegrownherbandtea.com .