"Back in the seventies, a New York food additive manufacturer called International Flavors & Fragrances used its annual report to defend itself against the rising threat of "natural foods" and explain why we were better off eating synthetics. Natural ingredients, the company pointed out rather scarily, are a "wild mixture of substances created by plants and animals for completely non-food purposes -- their survival and reproduction." These dubious substances "came to be consumed by humans at their own risk." The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan