[hughlomas]

"Natural" has more than one definition, dependent on its context. In some definitions of the word "natural", yes, twinkies are technically natural. In the more colloquial senses they are not. I prefer the more technical sense: since humans are derived from nature, they are natural, hence anything they do is natural. Unless you subscribe to some sort of man/nature metaphysical duality I don't see how you can argue that humans are not natural.

Twinkies are made from the same atoms as everything else. A glucose molecule assembled by a hypothetical atom arranger is indistinguishable from one synthesized in an organism. Twinkies are ultimately derived from nature, just as humans are ultimately derived from nature. Twinkies are a result of the congruence of multiple ideas that have evolved by natural selection. Among others, the ideas of refining and processing the chemical products of plants and animals, and how to make a twinkie-like baked good. Twinkies did not spontaneously appear in a vacuum.

Regardless of the words we use, the core idea of what we term "artificial selection" is a subset of the core idea of what we term "natural selection".

[TheZenPsycho]

but the context is food labelling, not technical/philisophical argument!

Let's address THAT definition of "Natural" without getting sidetracked by irrelevancies.