But That's Not Natural!

But That's Not Natural!

21 April 2026  |  7 min read

It is one of my biggest pet peeves how people seem to have this diffuse idea of "naturalness" in their head. As I perceive it, this builds on the (historically somewhat recent) idea that nature is some sort of ideal, god-given (depending on what your personal belief system is, of course) state and/or entity that we humans interact with. It is apparently understood that nature is this gold standard that we should strive to achieve, an environment we should seek to protect and the epitome of the good, the aesthetic, the healthy and the beautiful.

By extension anything that is perceived to stray from this ideal is looked down upon. Preservatives and other additives in food, cosmetics, and the like, synthetic fibers, factories, buildings of concrete and steel, all these are things we (sometimes) tolerate but view as somehow lesser than the so-called natural alternatives.

Interestingly, the concept of nature as some ideal to look up to is relatively new, considering fro how long humans have existed. You see, in the infamous Middle Ages people viewed nature as an enemy and an at least partly hostile environment to live in. I assume this has much to do with the fact that the natural sciences hadn't been born yet and a systematic understanding of this universe we live in was not as far advanced as it is today, not by a long shot. Also people's ability to resist the various occurences we call natural disasters was presumably much less than it is today but I'm speculating here.

Today we know everything there is to know about everything. But do we? No! Nature, this benevolent, thoroughly anthropomorphized entity, remains a mystery. Somehow it created us all and the world we inhabit with untold wisdom, creativity and skill but we heathens stray further and further from its warm embrace and dabble in the dark arts of engineering, mass producing and synthetic products. We all need to go back to the roots, back to nature itself!

Hyperbole aside, I have tried here to reconstruct the mental model that seems to live in the minds of so many people, certainly in quite a few of the ones I've met personally. First, everything about this model I have outlined so far is a false dichotomy. Second, the society we humans created would completely impossible, should we strive to go "back to nature" in the actual sense but more importantly: the meaning of this diffuse sentiment or calling is completely unclear, at least to me.

The term "natural" obviously refers to "nature", meaning everything originating there is "natural". Simple as that. The crux, of course, is that it's not exactly easy, if at all possible, to draw the line between things that are natural in this sense because whereas resources might have originated in nature, they are usually processed in some capacity by humans before other humans make use of them. A few examples:

• Domesticating livestock
• Pets
• Growing and harvesting crops
• Cooking
• Making clothes
• Building houses

This list is virtually endless. Pretty much nothing of what we humans eat, drink, own, use or interact with is untouched by other humans. Sure, you can go for a walk in a remote corner of the world and will find something of the sort but the fact remains: if you define "natural" as I did above, then almost nothing of the things that make up pur lives fits this definition. If we allow for human preprocessing in the chain of events, then everything is natural because, newsflash, all raw materials we have come from this planet we live on (except for a few meteorites and the like).

So let me ask again: what does "natural" in today's day and age mean to people? Does it mean to wear clothes made from wool instead of polyester? Putting no silicones inside your shampoo? Building your house out of wood and stone only? Eating only uncooked food? Is it natural to breed animals to an extent that will create dogs that can hardly walk or breathe anymore? Or if it is unnatural to manipulate genomes with CRISPR, how is it natural to breed corn to be more resistant and give more yield? Sure, the latter is less targeted but in both cases you deliberately adapt the DNA of something to your needs.

If it's so unnatural to synthesize flavors in a lab and put them in a yogurt, have you ever considered that literally all of the ingredients used for this originated on this very earth? Sure, they may have had to be extracted from somewhere or synthesized in turn but of course everything ultimately comes from nature. So why do people consider one thing to be natural and not the other? What is natural about smelting ore to produce iron, copper, bronze? What is natural about shaping gold and silver into something we wear around or necks or pierced into out earlobes (also, mutilating our bodies for decoration? What's up with that?)?

Granted, I've been ranting just now but now we come to the thing that positively incenses me:

Das ist ja pure Chemie! (This is pure chemistry!)

– Pretty much anyone at some point

I swear I'll strangle the next person to say something like this. I'm not quite sure if it's a common thing to say in English but in German (my native language) this is a phrase you'll often hear concerning food but also other things at times. What people mostly mean is that something is chock full of synthetic ingredients but whenever I actually ask what they mean, they can't give me a satisfactory answer.

I have to admit, I am a chemist myself so I'm not unbiased here but I've never understood how we got to the point that a whole discipline of the natural sciences is used as a derogatory term to describe something. Sure, the chemical industry has at times worked hard to earn a bad reputation but, frankly, the lives we (we who live in reasonably wealthy countries that is, but by extension everyone actually) lead would be unthinkable without the blessings of research and chemical industry. The Haber-Bosch process eats up about one whole percent of the worldwide energy consumption and without it we would lack the capacity to grow the amount of food we do because we wouldn't have the ammonia to make fertilizer from. It's chemical reactions that are at the core of making (or refining/purifying) steel, aluminum, cement (without which the modern building industry would be in a serious bind), plastic (do I really need to say more?), silicon (without which no electronic device would work), copper, hydrogen, fuel and so much more. Hell, every time you cook or bake something you're conducting a chemical reaction (and a tasty one at that, see here).

But for some reason most people^{[citation needed]} make completely arbitrary distinctions between what's natural and what isn't, look down on the things thereby defined as unnatural, ignoring that these make their lives possible in the first place, and, worst of all, feel weirdly smug about it all while not even realizing they're doing any of it. And when asked about what they mean I get answers like "Oh, you know what I mean!". No. Clearly, I don't and I posit that neither do you.