How I Read a Label Without Turning Dinner Into Homework

A grocery aisle can make you feel like you should have brought a binder. Seals, banners, "natural," "made with," a wall of claims that all want a decision right now. I don't want dinner to become homework.

What helps me is a short pass. I look for a few official categories, I ignore a few words that sound more official than they are, and I put the package in the cart or I don't. Then I go home and cook.

We eat only organic. This page is a reading guide, based on public labeling rules, so you can borrow the method and leave the rest.

The four official organic categories

The front of a package is advertising, even when it's also regulated. The information that actually settles an organic claim is often on the back: the ingredient list, and, on certified products, a line that names the certifying agent. USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service says organic labels have to be reviewed and approved by a USDA-accredited certifying agent before they go to market.

USDA organic regulations allow four different ways a packaged product can talk about organic ingredients. The details live on the AMS page "Labeling Organic Products," linked below.

"100 percent organic" means the product contains 100 percent organic ingredients, not counting salt and water. Most raw or minimally processed farm crops can use this claim. The USDA organic seal is allowed.

"Organic" means the product contains at least 95 percent organic ingredients, again not counting salt and water. Up to 5 percent may be nonorganic ingredients, with limits on what those can be. The USDA organic seal is allowed here too. This is the category a lot of people mean when they say a product "is organic."

"Made with organic ______" means the product contains at least 70 percent organically produced ingredients, not counting salt and water. The front may name up to three organic ingredients or ingredient categories, like "made with organic oats." It must not use the USDA organic seal. It must not represent the finished product as organic, and it must not use the phrase "made with organic ingredients." That last restriction surprised me the first time I read it carefully. The claim has to be specific.

Specific organic ingredient listings apply when a product contains less than 70 percent organic contents. The front must not use the USDA organic seal or the word "organic." The ingredient list may identify the certified organic ingredients as organic. Everything else in that product is not required to follow the USDA organic regulations.

That fourth category is why I don't treat the word "organic" on an ingredient line as if the whole box had been certified. It may only be the tomatoes.

The seal, and the word "natural"

The USDA organic seal is an official mark. Certified operations may use it on products that qualify as "100 percent organic" or "organic." They may not use it on a "made with organic ______" product, or on a product that only lists an organic ingredient in the fine print.

The seal doesn't tell you if something is healthy or tastes good, and it's not a medical claim. It's not a reason to skip vegetables that don't carry it. It tells you the product was produced and handled under the National Organic Program's rules, overseen by a certifying agent.

If a label uses a different private seal, or a color that merely suggests a field, I treat that as a different kind of signal. Some of those marks are meaningful in their own programs. They're not a substitute for the USDA organic categories above. I also don't confuse "organic" with "local" or "from a farm I could drive to." Those can all be good reasons to buy something. They're not the same fact.

"Natural" is the claim that most often makes a package feel official when it isn't. The Food and Drug Administration has not established a formal definition of the term for food labeling. The agency does have a longstanding policy: it has considered "natural" to mean that nothing artificial or synthetic, including all color additives regardless of source, has been included in or added to a food that would not normally be expected to be in that food.

Just as important is what that policy was not intended to cover. FDA has said the policy was not intended to address food production methods, such as the use of pesticides. It did not explicitly address processing or manufacturing methods such as pasteurization or irradiation. And the agency did not consider whether "natural" should describe any nutritional or other health benefit.

In 2015 the agency asked for public comment on whether and how to define the term. That comment period closed in 2016. The policy I just summarized is still the official explanation on FDA's page. So when a box says "natural," I read it as a limited claim about what was added, not as a cousin of "organic," and not as a health claim.

A pass I can finish before the ice cream melts

In practice, the pass is short.

I read the name of the product and any organic claim on the front. If it says "organic," I glance for the USDA seal, then I turn the package over and look at the ingredient list. If it says "made with organic" something, I notice that the finished product is not being called organic, and I don't look for a seal that should not be there. If the only organic word is buried in the ingredients, I treat it as a note about one item in the recipe.

I look at the first few ingredients, because those are present in the highest amounts. I look at the length of the list only as a rough signal of how processed the food is, not as a score. I notice added sugars and salt when they matter to the meal I'm actually cooking.

Then I stop. A full house in Arizona does not have a spare half hour in the aisle. If I can't decide in a short pass, I usually don't need that product tonight. There's almost always a simpler version of the same meal, or a leftover that already passed this test the last time I cooked.

This is not medical advice, and a label is not a treatment plan. My mom, Terrilyn Miller, has used food to fight cancer, and that story will be told in her words, when she is ready.

If you want a calmer way to think about fresh produce and pesticide lists, the companion to this piece is What's Worth Prioritizing at the Produce Aisle. If you want the bigger picture of how we eat, start with What I Mean by Eating Well at Home.

Sources

• Labeling Organic Products, USDA Agricultural Marketing Service - official description of the four USDA organic labeling categories, the seal, and the role of accredited certifying agents.
• The Organic Seal, USDA Agricultural Marketing Service - what the USDA organic seal is and who may use it.
• Use of the Term Natural on Food Labeling, U.S. Food and Drug Administration - FDA's longstanding policy on "natural," and the limits of that policy.

Nothing on this page is medical advice or a shopping rulebook. Official labeling categories are summarized from the public USDA and FDA pages linked above. If you have a health condition, including cancer, talk with your doctor before changing how you eat.