What matters is not whether something comes from a plant or a laboratory. What matters is what it is, how much there is, and what effect it produces.

This article comes from the first one

There we saw ...

  • that natural does not mean good,
  • that all food is chemistry, and
  • that the adult question is not whether something sounds natural, but what substance it is, at what dose it appears, and what evidence supports it.

Now we take one more step:

Molecules have no moral biography

Much of the naturalist discourse lives by assigning moral biography to molecules.

  • If it comes from nature, good.
  • If it comes from industry, suspicious.

But molecules do not work that way.

A molecule does not know where it comes from. It does not remember whether it was made by a plant, a yeast, a chemical reaction, or a technician in a lab coat. It has no emotional memory of its origin. It has no garden spirit.

  • It has structure.
  • It has properties.
  • It has dose.
  • It has interactions.
  • It has effects.

This does not mean origin never matters. It may matter because of impurities, contaminants, mixtures of compounds, traceability, production method, environmental impact, or costs. Of course it matters. But not by magic. It matters when it changes something real and measurable.

A simple example: two products may contain the same active molecule, but one may be contaminated, poorly dosed, or mixed with unwanted substances. There the problem is not that one is natural or synthetic. The problem is the real composition of the product, its quality, its control, and its use.

Precision matters.

  • There is no scientific category called “good molecule because it is natural.”
  • Nor is there a category called “bad molecule because it is synthetic.”

There are substances. There are doses. There are risks. There are benefits. There are contexts.

And there are sellers.

The dose makes the poison

Paracelsus put it with brutal precision:

  • “All things are poison; only the dose decides that something is not.”

It is not a pretty phrase. It is a way of thinking.

Water is essential. It can also kill if consumed in extreme excess. Salt is necessary. It can also be dangerous in high amounts. Caffeine can help you stay awake. It can also cause adverse effects if you abuse it. Alcohol is socially accepted. It is also toxic and causes enormous health damage.

Toxicity is not decided by asking whether a substance is natural.

It is decided by asking how much exposure there is and what that exposure does in a specific organism.

That is why toxicology exists.

And that is why serious debate speaks of dose, concentration, frequency, route of entry, individual sensitivity, metabolism, and accumulation. It does not speak of cosmic vibrations or “energy of the universe.”

Some substances are eliminated by the body with relative ease. Others accumulate. That difference changes risk. Mercury in large fish, for example, is a concern not because the sea is artificial, but because certain compounds can bioaccumulate in the food chain. The natural origin of a food does not cancel that problem.

The same is true of many natural contaminants. There are molds that generate mycotoxins. There are plants that produce toxic alkaloids. There are minerals with dangerous elements. There are perfectly natural bacteria capable of ruining your life.

Nature does not hand you a health certificate.

Food safety is not born from looking at a landscape. It is born from measuring, controlling, regulating, preserving, cooking, cleaning, transporting well, and monitoring real risks.

  • “Once Reality has been found, it is easy to spread and preserve it; the difficult part is searching for it with evidence and analysis.” — Pedro Tellería.

That is less romantic. It is also much more useful.

The natural also kills

There is a sentence that should be printed next to many green labels:

  • Natural does not mean safe.

Arsenic exists in nature. Lead exists in nature. Mercury exists in nature. Many toxins exist in nature. The fact that human beings did not invent something does not make it healthy.

Pathogens are natural too.

Epidemics did not begin with food preservatives. Human history is full of infectious diseases of natural, zoonotic, or environmental origin, with mutations and jumps between species that did not need any marketing laboratory to cause harm. Plague, cholera, flu, smallpox, different hemorrhagic fevers, and many food poisonings remind us of something elementary: nature can be brutal.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the exact origin of the virus was intensely debated. Prudence is needed on that point. What admits little debate is the general idea: viruses do not become good because they are natural.

This obvious point should be enough. But it is not.

Because the “Naturalist Imagination” does not operate with arguments. It operates with images.

  • A green leaf.
  • A wicker basket.
  • A grandmother kneading bread.
  • A field at sunset.
  • A word written in friendly typography.

The brain buys the story before reading the data. And when the brain buys a story, it then looks for reasons to justify it.

  • “The brain does not exist to find the truth, but to survive.” — synthesized from Richard Gregory, 2003.

To be continued

In the next article we will enter the eco, bio, and organic case:

  • what certification really means, ...
  • why organic does not mean substance-free, ...
  • why it does not guarantee more nutrition, and ...
  • why a label does not replace a good diet.