PRESENTLY TENSE

In 1978, most of the brothers at San Diego's Lewis Junior High School wore their hair in 'fros that looked like they could fit under football helmets. My friend Michael Spradley had hair that dominated his presence; it was almost old-school by then, a real beach ball of a natural, a natural that garnered him “best natural” in the yearbook.

It wasn't hard to get why it was called a “natural.” In the 1950s, African-American men still were conking their hair-straightening, processing, waving and greasing it into approximations of white hairstyles. But by the revolutionary late-1960s, Afro-centric consciousness had burst straight out of the scalp and into the hair. As white rebels let their hair grow down past their shoulders, black rebels were letting it grow up to the ceiling.

But was it really “natural?”

Michael sported a pick-comb in the back of his fro and was constantly combing his bush into shape. As Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor writes in American Visions magazine, “it took maintenance, maintenance, maintenance to wear the Afro, the natural, the bush.” One couldn't naturally achieve a good natural. That makes sense because the whole concept of what is natural versus what is artificial is a cultural construct. Natural isn't self-evident.

So who gets to define natural? Who says curly hair is more natural than flat? Who says that a nuclear bomb is a less natural tool than a monkey's termite stick? Who says one processed food is more natural than another?

Black Americans in the '60s defined natural for themselves. Around that same time, the majority of the people of the Earth began to speak up and collectively define nuclear weapons as unnatural. But right at this moment, natural is being defined for you.

Behind your back, corporations are influencing the government to define what is natural and what isn't. And that's what this is all about: If we don't define natural for ourselves, it will get defined by others, and since there is no clear line between natural and unnatural, it can be defined to include anything.

Case in point: The USDA closed discussion Jan. 11 on hearings that have taken place during the last couple months to determine what foods manufacturers can label “natural.” The mega-corporation that lobbied the USDA to re-define “natural”-the one that held high-level meetings with USDA executives to get the “public” hearings arranged-is your friend, Hormel Foods, makers of more than 40 disgusting products like “Hormel Chunk Meats,” “Hormel Dried Beef,” “Hormel Kid's Kitchen Microwave Meals” and that mysterious, gelatinous sodium-nitrated meat-mutant “Spam.”

Hormel's petition to the USDA criticizes inconsistencies in the current requirements for labeling foods “natural” because Hormel is concerned that “if the policy is misused, these inconsistencies will allow a Natural label to be placed on products that contain synthetic ingredients and preservatives, which will deceive consumers and erode the ‘Natural' label to a meaningless marketing ploy.” This would constitute “a betrayal of the public trust.” So says Mark S. Roberts of Hormel in his cover letter to Dr. Robert Post, director of labeling and consumer production at the USDA.

That sounds touchy-feely, but lots of Hormel foods are composed of genetically engineered and non-organic ingredients, factory-farmed animals treated with growth hormones, and chemical colorings, preservatives and flavorings.

What's at stake for Hormel is having an edge on competitors in the ham-hawking biz. The company detoxifies some of its meat products with high-pressure steam rather than chemicals so it can slap a “natural” label on 'em. Turns out, Hormel can sell more pig ass if folks think it's natural.

In the petition's Section 3, Hormel argues against current exemptions that allow foods to be labeled “natural” even though they contain “certain artificial and synthetic ingredients and preservatives”-in other words, stuff Hormel doesn't use to preserve its “natural” meats, like sodium lactate, a corn-based preservative used by other meat companies, particularly ones that can't afford the fancy high-pressure machine process Hormel uses.

Hormel adds similar preservatives, like sodium benzoate, to many of its products, but, you see, they don't label those products “natural.” That's how much they care about you.

Yet Hormel wants added to the list of exemptions: “Processing aids, such as anticaking or antifoaming agents, have functions in foods that are considered to be physical rather than chemical. Their presence in the final product is insignificant and they have no functional effect in the finished food. Examples include, but are not limited to, calcium silicate, magnesium oxide, calcium carbonate, dimethylpolysiloxane and sodium aluminosilicate.”

I don't know about you, but when I think of “natural,” I think of the anti-caking agent sodium aluminosilicate-you know, the stuff they put in house paint to prevent lumping. Mmmm, natural.

The other exception in the fine print is for anything done to the animal before it's slaughtered-feed it chemicals, pump it with growth hormones, raise it in a dark box, kill it without anesthesia-it's natural like a beautiful smoggy, sunset.

I can picture my old pal Michael now, all grown up, his natural buzzed off, maybe sitting in his kitchen feeding his kids a big can of “natural” Hormel meat product. “Look kids, it's natural, like your dad's old hairstyle.”

Mega-corporations and their government cronies are deciding what's natural for you to eat. If we had a movement as powerful as those in the '60s to control the integrity of our foods in a meaningful-rather than a phony, profit-protecting way-we could decide for ourselves what's natural.

Results aren't in yet on the new regulations, but I'll bet you an organic apple they're gonna look a lot like Hormel's. And while we're waiting for the death merchants to tell us what's natural, kids, let's all gather 'round for a dance to the final funky bars of that old minimally processed chestnut by Gang of Four, “Natural's Not In It:” “This heaven gives me migraine / This heaven gives me migraine / This heaven gives me migraine.