Walking through the aisles at the grocery store recently, I noticed many packages labeled “all-natural.”

There are “all-natural” foods, cleaning products, even paper products. As a chemist, I was particularly interested in what criteria must be met for a product to qualify for the “all-natural” distinction.

To my surprise, I found that the term “all-natural” is not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration and can be applied to a label at the manufacturer's discretion.

This is in stark contrast to the high level of regulation of foods and products labeled organic. These products are strictly regulated by the National Organic Program (in the United States).

Without a regulated, universal definition of the term “all-natural,” it can be very hard to decipher what this actually means. To many people an all-natural food is probably one that contains no refined sugar or flour, no hydrogenated oils, artificial sweeteners and no artificial flavorings or colorings.

This definition of all-natural could be very hard to enforce, however, because of the fuzzy lines between “natural,” “synthetic” or “chemical.”

As a chemist, I think that I can offer a unique perspective on this distinction.

Many times on the news or in television ads, there are warnings about chemicals and their harmful effects. Of course there are many chemicals that are harmful to humans and other animals and plants but there are also many others that are completely benign. Everything in this world is made up of chemicals.

Water is one of the most important chemicals on the earth and is used in many chemical reactions both by our bodies and by a scientist in the lab.

So, to me, water is both “all-natural” and a chemical.

There are also examples of very harmful “all-natural” substances that are also chemicals. An extreme example is batrachotoxin, a neurotoxin, which can be found on the skin of certain types of frogs, especially poison-dart frogs. Batrachotoxin is especially toxic, and for the average person, ingestion of around 100 micrograms (1/10th of a milligram) would be fatal. There is much attention in the field of science devoted to researching these natural products, or compounds derived from natural sources - animals, plants and marine life to name a few - that have interesting functions.

A great success story of this research is the cancer drug Taxol. Taxol is produced by the Pacific Yew Tree and can be purified from the bark of the tree. These trees do not produce enough Taxol to keep up with the demand in the medical community, so it is synthesized by scientists in the lab. The synthetic version of the drug is the same as the naturally occurring version and, therefore, still considered “all-natural.”

The field of natural product research has resulted in many compounds that are currently used in treating many diseases, including cancer.

The world is made up of chemicals, from the water we drink to the plastic cup that we drink it from. Obviously not all of these chemicals can be considered all-natural, but many of them are either synthesized to mimic other naturally occurring chemicals, without some of the side-effects, or have been designed to solve a common problem. Imagine our lives without plastics or synthetic fibers, such as polyesters.

In general, there are positive and negative effects of almost everything that we encounter in our lives, including chemicals.

Just because something is “all-natural,” such as batrachotoxin from the poison dart frog, doesn't mean that it is necessarily safe and good for us. Also, just because something is chemical doesn't mean that it is harmful, such as the water that we are so dependent upon for life.

Weedsport native Lauren

O'Neil holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of Notre Dame. She will tackle

current trends in her monthly

column by explaining the science behind such matters