what is natuarl ingredients ?

The Natural Ingredient Resource Center was founded to help consumers, manufacturers and retailers, focusing on natural products for the home and family, to learn more about the natural ingredients in the products they buy, make or sell. To encourage and provide an opportunity for manufacturers of these products to voluntarily show that they support "truth in labeling" and to provide a resource for education about natural ingredients. The NARC does not certify ingredients, products or police compliance. Visit our Pledge Members Links page for the best in products containing natural ingredients. Because natural matters!

While it is true that there is no official, U.S. governmentregulated definition for the term natural pertaining to the natural products industry, the FDA refers to natural ingredients as "ingredients extracted directly from plants or animal products as opposed to being produced synthetically."

The key word there is, "extracted directly". In the case of some ingredients, it's easy to see that they fit easily into this definition.

But what about raw materials that need to undergo some processing or chemical reaction in order to extract the ingredient from the natural raw material that is the source? 

Even distilling aromatic plants to produce essential oils sometimes results in the creation of chemicals that didn't exist in the raw material, but which are created by the actual distillation process alone!

The "Encyclopedia of Common Natural Ingredients" says a  natural product is defined as a "product that is derived from plant, animal or microbial sources, primarily through physical processing, sometimes facilitated by simple chemical reactions such as acidification, beatification, ion exchange, hydrolysis, and salt formation as well as microbial fermentation."

"In the early '80s the FTC came up with a great definition for Natural - never adopted. They said that an ingredient may be called "natural" only if it contains no artificial or synthetic ingredients and has had no more processing than something which could be made in a household kitchen."