Can you define the word “natural”?
The Food and Drug Administration is certainly trying. Since 2014, the agency has asked the public to weigh in on how the term should be defined and used on food labels — or whether it is even appropriate for the F.D.A. to regulate the use of the word at all. By the time the agency closed its public commenting period on May 10, about 7,600 comments had poured in from consumers, companies, food experts and health and legal authorities.