Food Label Saga: What is "natural"?

USDA defines "natural" when applied to meat and poultry: No artificial or synthetic ingredients, including added hormones, and minimally processed.

Here is FDA's definition for "natural": When the food does not contain added color, artificial flavors or synthetic substances. The loophole is that they don't define synthetic.

So under FDA, High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) can be claimed as natural, because at some point it comes from corn, and does not contain added color, artificial flavors, etc.

As a matter of fact, here is the process involved in making HFCS: Corn refiners are equipped with centrifuges, hydroclones, ion exchange columns and buckets of enzymes in order to modify the molecular structure of corn and turn it into HFCS.

Back in the 80s, FTC came up with this definition for "natural": A food that has no more processing than something which could be made in a household kitchen.
Unfortunately, this definition was never adopted. Does anyone here own a ion exchange column?

Back in February 2006, the Sugar Association -with its own agenda against the Corn Refiners Association- petitioned FDA to restrict claims for "natural" to minimally-processed ingredients, in line with the USDA definition.
The petition was once more rejected: The Corn lobby must be more powerful than the Sugar lobby.

What is our best resource to figure out what is natural then? Flip the package over, as usual, and read the ingredient list: If a child can read any single word of it, explain what it is, and how it is made, it may be a good sign.