In defense of “natural”

Yesterday I ranted about the misuse of the word “natural,” so today I must, in the great Socratic tradition, take the other side.

We just returned from a long trip to the East Coast. We went to visit family and to soak up culture that we are largely lacking on this coast. In both respects, it was a great success.

But one of the things about travel is that it puts your usual life in stark relief. It can be a useful time for reflection on what you love about your life and the place you have chosen to live, and what you want to change. My husband and I both toy with the idea of living in a big city, because we love so much of what cities have to offer, but we keep returning to the Republic of Santa Cruz. Why?

Well, first of all, there’s the food. At times I felt like we were awash in a sea of high fructose corn syrup. Feeding my kids anything like a healthy diet was nearly impossible. Stores with healthy offerings, available pretty much anywhere where we live, are hidden in out of the way corners. Certainly, if we’d settled into a normal life, we probably would have found those little corners where we could feed ourselves healthily. But as travelers, we were constantly thwarted, and I was constantly giving in to foods I’d never consider in our daily life.

We spent two weeks in New Jersey, not far from New York City. We spent most of the first week traveling into the city every day: We saw The Lion King (fabulous and worth every one of those many pennies we had to haul from the bank to buy tickets). We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We went to the MoMA. We went to the really amazing Tenement Museum to learn how my kids’ forbears lived when they first came to this country. It was all great.

But live long enough almost anywhere in California, and you feel a huge nature deficit when you’re in the east. Not only is there very little nature (most of it is manicured parks, which don’t count!), but people don’t seem terribly interested in it. We spent a fun morning at a play structure in New Jersey, watching with awe as a family of muskrats played nearby. Not another person noticed them. The kids and I watched two birds busily making their nest high up in the roof of part of the play structure. It was better than anything you can see on TV, watching Daddybird and Mommybird flying in with bits of grass and a ribbon from some child’s birthday party.

Only one other child noticed. He looked up at the nest and the busy activity, picked up a rock, and threw it.

Luckily, the nest was high and his aim was bad.

Look at a map of almost any sort of lifestyle data, and you’ll see nature and health dominate the West Coast and turn up in tiny, isolated spots elsewhere. For example, it’s the unusual Santa Cruz mom who doesn’t breastfeed. I even know an adoptive mom who convinced her body to make some milk for her baby. But the map of breastfeeding rates in this country tells the story pretty clearly:

CDC breastfeeding mapWe left-coasters have a significantly different attitude toward life — we choose the natural route whenever possible.

In a way, these differences are comforting. I remember when I was in college and a linguistics professor lamented to me that our country was becoming so homogenized, that we were losing our regional accents along with regional food and other markers of local culture. I think we did go through a period of homogenization with the increased speed of communication, but it seems to have leveled out.

70 years after TV started to make us all the same, Santa Cruz is very different from similar towns near New York City. And this is not a bad thing.

The last day of our trip, I found myself in a Florida supermarket, speaking to my daughter in exasperation.

“For god’s sake, we’re in Florida,” I told her. “And I can’t just find a bottle of fresh-squeezed orange juice!”

Awash in a sea of high fructose corn syrup, we finally found a display of juices. Overpowered by the huge display of Simply Orange, processed and packaged by the Coca-Cola Company, I found a few bottles of locally produced orange juice. Apparently, Floridians prefer to drink the same orange juice they drink in New York City. Despite our differences, most of us try to be as much the same as possible.

Me, I’ll take the local variety any day. Hurray for nature, muskrats playing in the grass, birds in love, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and babies, whether they breastfeed or not.

7 surprising things to consider about “natural” products

One thing that really gets my goat is how people who don’t understand chemistry and biology in the least like to make grand claims about “natural” ingredients. The latest is this article about sunscreen from Natural News, 7 surprising things you’re not supposed to know about sunscreen and sunlight exposure, which takes as its premise that anything natural is necessarily good for you. Reading this piece is like a lesson in shoddy argumentation techniques, but it provides a useful lesson in how to cast a skeptical eye when manufacturers use the word “natural.”

#1) The FDA refuses to allow natural sunscreen ingredients to be used in sunblock / sunscreen products

Note the inflammatory verb: refuses. Actually, the FDA provides a process to file claims that any natural product has medical properties, but someone has to do the research. That means someone has to pay for the research. And supplement companies are very happy to take in your money, but not so happy to have to prove that their claims are true. I’d like to see the multi-billion dollar supplement industry start to prove their claims rigorously, because that’s the way to prove that you’re not just selling snake oil.

Also, one of the problems of so-called “natural” products is that they are not stable — they change over time. One of the most important properties of a packaged sunscreen is that it be shelf-stable and, very importantly, stable enough in your hot car and sitting in a drawer. Most natural products won’t pass this test (which is a very good reason not to put money into testing them). For example, I read a claim that green tea provides some sunscreen protection. Have you ever brewed years-old tea? Yuck! It degrades, as all natural things do. (Of course, chemical compounds of all sorts break down, which is why you should be careful to replace old sunscreen regularly.)

#2) Nearly all conventional sunscreen products contain cancer-causing chemicals

I could counter this with the same claim: nearly all natural compounds contain cancer-causing chemicals. Go ahead, try to prove me wrong. This is a broad, unprovable statement. Yes, many compounds, natural and synthetic, cause cancer when you force-feed them to lab animals. Whether they are causing cancer when used correctly by a large population of people is something much harder to study. If people using sunscreen are getting cancer from the sunscreen, that data can be gathered and analyzed, and should be.

#3) In a nation where over 70% of the population is vitamin D deficiency, sunscreen actually blocks vitamin D production

First of all, the 70% is highly debatable. New studies have come out showing what seems to be vitamin D deficiency in a large percentage of people studied, but those studies also point out that they are really not sure how much vitamin D we need.

Also, you need to look further past this statement. Up to 80% of Americans are considered overweight. Overweight people have a layer of fat under their skin, which absorbs the vitamin D and keeps it from being distributed in the body. How much of the vitamin D deficiency is actually just a by-product of the obesity epidemic? Furthermore, now that close to 50% of Americans have dark skin, fewer of us actually use the sun to manufacture vitamin D in our bodies.

Finally, how much sun exposure is necessary for proper vitamin D manufacture? My Northern European ancestors spent months in cold and dark, with their skin covered by thick clothing. They clearly weren’t making any vitamin D at that time. Their descendent is now living in California, where the native population had dark brown skin. I clearly don’t need to spend very much time outside my house getting sun exposure equal to what my ancestors got in a year.

#4) You can boost your internal sun resistance by changing what you eat

It’s likely that there’s some truth to this, but it’s hardly a substitute for other sun protection: No one with my skin is going to suddenly start manufacturing more melanin by eating fresh vegetables. If I ate the absolute perfect skin-protecting diet for a year, do you really think I’d be able to go out in California sunshine and not get burned to a crisp? If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you! Arguments like this simply assume that we are stupid.

#5) UV exposure alone does not cause skin cancer

Cancer is complex. Nutrition is complex. Life is complex. So yes, this statement is technically correct. But we do have enough data to know that people who get skin cancer have certain things in common. The highest correlation is with getting blistering sunburns. Avoiding blistering sunburns is the number one way to take yourself out of the pool of possible skin cancer sufferers. Of course, I’m sure if you found a large group of people who had never gotten any UV exposure, you’d find that some percentage of them would get skin cancer. But that doesn’t mean that you should just throw out the sunscreen and let yourself burn.

#6) Not all “natural” sunscreen products are really natural

I appreciate this point. The word “natural” is not regulated and can be applied to any box or bottle no matter what it contains. But I take issue with what the writer thinks is natural. So anything starting with the prefixes methyl, propyl, butyl, etc. is unnatural? But micronized zinc oxide is natural? What exactly is natural about taking a mineral from the ground and processing it till you make it into a clear cream?

This argument also rests on the supposition that natural is equivalent to “good” or “healthy.” But if everything “natural” is “better,” then should we start adding peach pits to our smoothies? Yum, cyanide! How about munching on rhubarb leaves? And let’s start giving our babies soft lead toys to suck on. Socrates really loved that hemlock shake, and I’m sure it was the added chemicals that really killed him!

Reasonable people know that “natural” is basically an empty term. What we need to know is whether something is safe, and safe is much harder to prove than natural. The longer we study things, the more we learn. So something that might look safe now might be proven to be unsafe in the future. That doesn’t mean that the scientists of today are somehow trying to hurt you. It means that we learn as we grow, which is… natural!

#7) Many “chemical free” sunscreens are loaded with chemicals

Here’s a fact that any educated person should know: all of life is made of chemicals. Chemical names can be given to any natural compound. Just because I call it dihydrogen oxide doesn’t mean drinking it will give me cancer. In fact, I bet you’ve ingested it today and assumed it was healthy because it was “natural.” The natural outputs of fermenting fruit and other natural compounds have many of the scary prefixes the writer mentions (ethyl! propyl! butyl!) and are as natural as nature can provide.

***

Let’s face it: The data on sun exposure and sunscreen is not all in yet. Our understanding has changed radically in the last thirty years, and will continue to change radically as more research is done. Many of the things the writer of this article claims may turn out to be true, but that doesn’t mean that they are proven true now. What we now know about skin cancer is pretty straightforward:

1) If you get blistering sunburns in childhood, you are much more likely to get skin cancer. Therefore, do whatever you can to keep your kids from getting blistering sunburns. As of yet, no other strong correlations have been proven.

2) Some amount of sun exposure is fine and probably healthy, but that doesn’t mean that any amount of sun exposure is healthy. Look at your body, your family history, and your reactions to sun exposure, and make healthy decisions.

3) The easiest way to lessen risk is to avoid it. If you want a 0% chance of dying in a car accident (a much higher risk to all of us than skin cancer, by the way), don’t leave home. If you are in a high risk skin cancer group, and you want to lessen your risk of skin cancer, use whatever methods you can to avoid too much sun exposure. Get your kids long-sleeved swim shirts, make them wear hats on the playground, wear long sleeves and hats on sunny hikes, and use sunscreen appropriately.

4) All cancers are best treated through early detection. Learn what risk group you and your kids are in. Learn what sorts of changes to watch for. And consult a medical professional (not your health food store employee) if you are concerned about any change in your skin.

We should all support dedicating money to studying the causes of skin cancer and studying new and less dangerous ways to lessen our risks. But in the process, don’t let the word “natural” turn you into a thoughtless consumer of so-called “natural” products. Mother Nature invented tigers, cobras, and black widow spiders. She’s not out to protect your children.

That’s your job.

Follow-up article: In Defense of “Natural”

Sugar fixation

We were standing in line on the Staten Island Ferry, New York City, land of great street food, and all my daughter wanted was a soda.

How did this happen?

My kids know the lecture: There are three reasons the American population has gotten so fat. One is screentime, which leads to lack of exercise. We took care of that one very early by cutting out all TV watching in our house. These days, we’re so used to it, we forget to watch TV! Reason two is packaged food full of processed ingredients. In this case, we all love to cook and eat really great, healthy food, so the only problem we have to watch is my daughter’s love of crackers. The third reason is soda.

So there we were, standing in line behind a young man well on his way down the road to obesity, and she’s asking for a soda. I can’t remember the day it started, but it probably went something like this. She asked for a Snapple. I really wanted a Snapple. Darn it, occasionally a woman deserves a big hit of sugar and caffeine in the middle of a hectic day. So I said, OK.

She’s the sort of kid who watches for weakness in any structure, then pounces. She found a crack, and she dug a finger in.

Next we go visiting the relatives in New Jersey. At every stop: soda, juice. We allow her a cup of seltzer. Finally, friends in the old neighborhood offer ginger ale. The puppy eyes come out. “I’ve always wanted to taste ginger ale…. Pleeeeeease???”

Once the crack is opened, the flood of requests pour in, and I have to start up the propaganda machine again.

“Let’s start at the beginning. Do you remember why so many people in this country are fat, obese, and suffering from completely preventable diseases like Type II diabetes?”

She plays dumb, my kid who is so obsessed with the human body that she has a whole bookshelf of knowledge on why the body starts to need insulin injections to survive.

“It’s because of soda. Remember what happens when you put too much sugar in? Sugar gives us energy, but most Americans don’t use the energy they put into their bodies. So it gets stored as fat. They get fat and unhealthy. Then the functions in their bodies break down. Their bodies can’t process sugar correctly anymore. They have to inject drugs for the rest of their lives. They are the first generation of Americans whose life expectancy will be lower than their parents’.”

The size, sweetness, and saltiness of sodas keeps rising along with Americans' waistlines and diabetes-related deaths.
The size, sweetness, and saltiness of sodas keeps rising along with Americans' waistlines and diabetes-related deaths.

She actually got the short version of the lecture. I could have opened up Youtube on my phone and searched for Dr. Robert Lustig’s video on fructose that went viral last year. That’s fructose as in “high fructose corn syrup,” the major ingredient in American sodas. Fructose, which he calls “poison.” I could have reminded her about how we learned why sodas are so high in salt: they add all the salt to mask how sickly sweet the sodas are (all that cheap HFCS), and also to make us more thirsty. They don’t want us to drink just one soda, you know. That wouldn’t be good for business.

But I didn’t have time to go on. “We’re next!” my daughter announced bouncily, as the soon-to-be-obese young man stepped up to the counter.

“What’s your largest size of soda?” he asked.

“Twenty ounces,” the clerk said.

“Gimme one of those,” he said.

Apparently my lecture didn’t spoil his fun. My daughter, however, ended up sulking her way through a box of milk. She should be happy, though. All that healthy food gives her the brain development and energy to plot new ways to exploit the cracks in my health-conscious veneer.

Learning to play nice isn’t always easy!

A mom asked me this question:

“What do I do when my passive preschooler’s aggressive friend hurts her? We love the friend, but I just don’t know what to do in this situation. I don’t want to discipline her, but I don’t want to make what she did seem right.”

I am unusually well-situated to answer this question. My first child was the disciplinarian’s dream. As a preschooler, he was never the aggressor, and I was very tempted to think that the parents of the aggressors were doing something wrong.*

*I will add, in the spirit of full disclosure, one exception: On the first day of preschool, our 18-month-old son bit another child hard enough to break the skin. His teacher was a veteran, and she was not at all concerned. “This is a new experience for him. Let’s wait and see.” It never happened again.

Our daughter, on the other hand, is regularly involved in situations where she has clearly done wrong. This was true from her earliest interactions with other kids. When she was a baby, she inadvertently pulled her brother’s hair one time. When he cried, I imagine that I saw look of amazement on her face. “Wow, that happened when I pulled his hair once. I wonder what will happen the next time?”

And the next. And the next.

Many parents, whether privately or to my face, have believed that her behavior was a product of our parenting.

Obviously, we can’t have it both ways. My husband and I have refined our parenting for our two very different children, but we are the same family, the same two parents, the same house, the same food, water and air. The fact is, kids are different. They start out different, they react differently to their environments, and they end up different people from how they start. Nature vs. nurture is bogus: it’s all a big jumble that we only have a small amount of control over.

So returning to the question at hand: What do you do?

First of all, you can’t parent another child anymore than you’d want anyone else to parent your child. On the other hand, one of the best pieces of advice I’ve gotten about being with other people’s kids is, “Be yourself.” You can’t pretend to be a parent who accepts the behavior, either. So you have to look at it another way.

You have a child who is being mistreated, intentionally or not, by another child. Your main objective is not to change the aggressive child (you can’t), but to make the behavior stop (for the moment).

If you’re faced with a disagreeable child who is out to make your child cry, the choice is easy. End the relationship or at least constrain it.

But most kids who are more aggressive than your passive kid are worth keeping as friends. So my first response was, “Tell the child simply that hitting isn’t allowed in your house, then try to redirect the interactions of the kids so that the aggression doesn’t play out.” This would mean suggesting a game that you know is calming for them, doing something where you are physically between them, or separating them into different activities if the more aggressive child gets overstimulated.

The second piece of advice is harder: Admit that you’re not up to the challenge of taking on this child alone. When the parent of the child asks you again to take her child, make sure that you feel that you’re not being taken advantage of. Or consider that you have a baby as well as your other child, and won’t be able to give proper attention to the two of them. Or consider whether you’ve had enough sleep, whether you and your child are particularly cranky that day, and any other possible factors. Then tell the truth.

“You know, Dana, I’d love to help out, but I don’t think I’d be up to taking care of both of them today. I’m sorry.”

or

“The baby is taking up so much of my attention right now, I don’t feel like I can take on another child.”

Finally, remember that parents of aggressive children are not usually in the dark about their child’s behavior. Yes, there are those deluded parents, but you already decided not to deal with them, right? Instead, you’re dealing with a stressed-out mom whose third child is a dynamo she didn’t expect, or a dad who actually wanted to be a professional writer but ended up Mr. Mom because his wife makes more money, or whatever other complications your friend has in her life.

I have had parents ask me about my daughter in less than graceful ways, and then I’ve had those parents who did it right. The right way was assume that I knew what kind of kid I had, and that I had developed expertise in dealing with my child. They posed their questions something like this:

“This thing happened when your daughter was at my house. Here’s how I dealt with it. Can you offer me advice for how you would deal with it, or let me know more effective ways of helping her get along with my child?”

When you’re the parent of a difficult child, it is so heartening to have another parent assume that you are trying to do the right thing. It sets your conversation on a positive path when that parent asks for your help rather than demands your child’s compliance.

There is great value in helping your child learn to get along with a variety of people. I had to make a conscious effort to remind myself that it was good for my shy son to be with more active kids, even though he sometimes ended up crying. And every single day, my daughter gets lessons in how to modulate her reactions to stimuli so that she can get along better with other people. I’ve never regretted doing a little work to facilitate their interactions with kids who are different from them. Given how different we are from each other, it’s a good lesson for life.

Happy another-day-of-parenting day!

I was trying to schedule a visit with an old friend I haven’t seen in years. I said, how about this weekend? And she said, Well, it’s Father’s Day so I’ll be away all weekend.

Oh, yeah, Father’s Day. I’m supposed to remember that, right?

My husband and I try not to make too much of what we call “Hallmark Holidays,” but even if you decide that, you’re left with a conundrum. What if I make nothing of it and his feelings are hurt? What if I set up a big deal and all he wanted to do was to clean out the garage that day?

Couples I know who have no kids are almost all united in the importance of such romantic holidays as Valentine’s Day. Let me tell you: the first time you spend Valentine’s Day trying to spit out a baby who’d really rather stick around in that warm, free-drink environment is the last day you get really romantic about Valentine’s Day! I’m not sure who’s less romantic about Val Day: Parents with kids at home, or parents whose kids have grown and moved on. So this is what love got us?

But our payback is supposed to be these separate holidays we get, mother’s and father’s day. These are supposed to be sacred holidays for us hardworking parents. We are supposed to be awoken by bright-faced children carrying in trays so that we can eat breakfast in bed, bestowed with wonderful presents, and celebrated in story and song. The reality is somewhat different. One year, my children did decide to bring me breakfast in bed. Problem is, I get up earlier than they do, and I treasure that time to take my solitary walk. But there they were with a tray full of food, in front of faces full of good intentions.

Grudgingly, I got back into bed.

I hate eating in bed. And the granola had sat on the yogurt so long it was soggy.

Otherwise, it was perfect!

Perhaps what it comes down to is that parenting is its own reward and its own punishment. On the one hand, you are rewarded by those children who do, in fact, want to make you happy. Who do love you no matter how bad of a parent you are. (Though they tell you about every little thing you do wrong.) Who idolize you to the point that they will eventually make most of the mistakes you made in life (and then some).

On the other hand, parenting is definitely its own punishment. In what other job, do the customers served so faithfully — you give them life, for god’s sake! — care so little about your sacrifices? In what other job does success mean sending your product out in to the world never to be able to fix it again? (Though many parents try, throughout their adult children’s lives, to fix them.)

So…Happy Father’s Day. Celebrate it as you wish. We’ll probably just do a nice breakfast, mention a few times how much we appreciate him, and leave it at that. If they want to make more of it once they’re adults, that’s fine. Until then, we’ll just have to savor the bittersweet flavor of the world’s hardest job.

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