The presence of the word "natural" on your food has long guaranteed you one thing: Someone at that food company wanted to write it there. Despite being an extremely evocative bit of ad copy, "natural" is a meaningless designation—and one that the FDA has therefore declined to define.

This November, though, something interesting happened; the agency posted a short notice on its website asking people to send in their own definition of just what "natural" might mean to them. Then, with the period expiring at the end of the year, they just extended that deadline even further, saying they wanted to keep hearing proposed definitions of natural all the way up until this May.