The 6 Most Horrifying Lies The Food Industry is Feeding You
#3. Fake Berries
Imagine a blueberry muffin.
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One muffin, you greedy bastards.
Even with your freshly gained knowledge that there may or may not be some cellulose in the cake mix, it's pretty impossible not to start salivating at the thought. This is largely because of the berries themselves. What's better -- they're so very, very healthy that it's almost wrong for them to taste so good.
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We could taste delicious if we wanted to. Stupid show-off berries.
Everything is better with blueberries -- that's why they put them in so many foods. Now that we think of it, there sure seems to be a lot of blueberries in a lot of products. You'd think we'd see more blueberry fields around ...
The Horror:
... not that it would do any good, as the number of blueberries you've eaten within the last year that have actually come from such a field is likely pretty close to zero.
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We can almost hear the muffins mocking us.
Studies of products that supposedly contain blueberries indicate that many of them didn't originate in nature. All those dangly and chewy and juicy bits of berry are completely artificial, made with different combinations of corn syrup and a little chemist's set worth of food colorings and other chemicals with a whole bunch of numbers and letters in their names.
They do a damn good job of faking it, too -- you need a chemist's set of your own to be able to call bullshit. You can sort of tell them from the ingredient lists, too, if you know what to look for, although the manufacturers tend to camouflage them under bullshit terms like "blueberry flakes" or "blueberry crunchlets."
Natural News TV
Nothing says "nature" like petrochemical-derived food coloring.
There are a number of major differences between the real thing and the Abomination Blueberry: The fake blueberries have the advantages of a longer shelf life and, of course, being cheaper to produce. But they have absolutely none of the health benefits and nutrients of the real thing. This, of course, doesn't stop the manufacturers from riding the Blueberry Health Train all the way to the bank, sticking pictures of fresh berries and other bullshit cues all over the product packaging.
Now, here's some good news: The law does require the manufacturers to put the whole artificial thing out there for the customers. The bad news, however, is that they have gotten around this, too. First up, the Kellogg's Mini-Wheats way:
This is somewhat recognizable. They just stick a picture of the berries there, while not actually bothering to conceal the fact that the actual cereal looks like it's made of cardboard and Smurf paste.
A bunch of Betty Crocker products and Target muffins use the second route, which brings the cheat level even further by actually containing an unspecified amount of real berries. This way they can legally advertise natural flavors while substituting the vast majority of berries with the artificial ones.
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All but three of these are made of plastic.
Or, you can just take the "we don't give a fuck anymore" route, as evidenced by General Mills' Total Blueberry Pomegranate cereal. The whole selling point of the product is that it contains a bucketload of blueberries and pomegranates, and the package boasts all the buzzwords the marketing department has been able to dream up:
Find The Best
Dick.
In reality, not only are the blueberries fake, but also they've forged the freaking pomegranates as well.
#2. "Free Range" Chickens That Are Crammed Into a Giant Room
Buying "free range" eggs is one of the easiest ways to feel good as a consumer -- they are at least as readily available as "normal," mass produced eggs from those horrible giant chicken prisons Big Egg maintains. Hell, they even cost pretty much the same. There's literally no reason not to buy free range even though, now that we think about it, we're not actually sure what that means. But the animals must live in pretty good conditions. In fact, let's buy our meat and poultry free range, too!
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Fresh air, green grass, plenty of cocks ... free range chickens have it good.
Well, according to law, the definition of "free range" is that chickens raised for their meat "have access to the outside." OK ... so that's not quite as free as we assumed, and it appears to only apply to chickens raised for their meat. But at least they still have some freedom, what with the outside and all that.
The Horror:
Words have power, and "free range" in its original sense means unfenced and unrestrained. That makes it a powerful phrase that, no matter how smart we are, conjures subconscious images of freedom hens, riding tiny little freedom horses out on the plains, wearing hen-sized cowboy hats and leaving a happy little trail of delicious freedom eggs in their wake. There may be mandolin music.
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Although we have it on good authority that chickens prefer Jay-Z.
But the reality is there are absolutely no regulations whatsoever for the use of the term "free range" on anything other than chickens raised for their meat. Your Snickers bar could be free range for all the government cares.
The industry knows this full well and happily makes us lap up the free range myth, even though in reality a free range hen lives in pretty much the same prison as a battery cage hen -- except its whole life takes place in the prison shower, rather than a cell.
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Look, they're free!
Awareness of the free range myth is slowly increasing, but although a manufacturer that has been pushing his luck a bit too much does get jailed every once in a while, that doesn't do much to the overall phenomenon. In fact, Europe is set to ban egg production in cage systems come 2012. Guess what the replacement is going to be?
#1. Bullshit Health Claims
Nuts that reduce risk of heart disease. Yogurts that improve digestion and keep you from getting sick. Baby food that saves your kid from atopic dermatitis, whatever the hell that may be. Products like that are everywhere these days, and we do have to admit it's hard to see any drawbacks to them. We eat yogurt anyway, so why not make it good for our tummy while we're at it?
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"This brand treats syphilis and diabetes."
It's just that we can't keep wondering where all these magic groceries suddenly appeared from. One day your peanuts were peanuts, and then, all of a sudden, it was all coronary disease this and reduce heart attack risks that. Maybe Food Science just had a really, really productive field day a while back?
Or, of course, it could be that we're being fooled yet again.
Amazon Fresh
We don't know if we could handle Mr. Peanut lying to us.
The Horror:
The vast majority of product health claims use somewhat older technology than most of us realize: the ancient art of bullshitting. The "health effects" of wonder yogurts and most other products with supposed medical-level health benefits can be debunked completely, thoroughly and easily. So why are they able to keep marketing this stuff?
It all started in 2002, when many ordinary foods found themselves suddenly gaining surprising, hitherto unseen superpowers. This is when the FDA introduced us to a new category of pre-approved product claims. It was called "qualified health claims," and it was basically just another list of marketing bullshit the company can use if their product meets certain qualifications. This was nothing new. What was new, however, was that the list said no consensus for the scientific evidence for the product's health claims was needed.
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"That pepper will keep you hard for hours, and eggplant works in lieu of chemotherapy."
Since "no consensus needed" is law-talk for "pay a dude in a lab coat enough to say your product is magic and we'll take his word for it no matter what everyone else says," companies immediately went apeshit. Suddenly, everyone had a respected scientist or six in their corner, and the papers they published enabled basically whatever they wanted to use in their marketing and packaging.
We're not saying that none of the products boasting health properties work. There are plenty out there, but they're kind of difficult to find under the constant stream of bullshit supplementary claims. Come on, food industry -- just tell us the truth. Don't you realize that we'll just eat it anyway? Shit, people still buy cigarettes, don't they?
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"There's a doctor who says these can cure my gout."
Read more of Pauli's ranting at The Unpronounceable, the least edible comedy blog on the Internet.
For more revealing truths, check out 6 Bullshit Facts About Psychology That Everyone Believes and The 6 Most Frequently Quoted Bullsh*t Statistics.
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The thing with the blueberries always pisses me off, anyone that has had fresh blueberries (or even real dried blueberries) in baked goods should be able to tell the difference. The worst part is there are already selling blueberries in bulk all year round, some of the companies doing so are owned by the same corporations that own the companies that use all the artificial berries, so why not use the real damn berries you are already growing and slapping a different label on?
ReplyJust a few points on this...... #6 Cellulose is the main component in ALL plants....it is comepletely natural, and is the main component of plant cell walls. You can pick a celery stalk right out of the field, and it is about 75% cellulose....identical to that in wood. #5 Removal of oxygen in a vacuum perfectly preserves an organic product, even a year later, if the vacuum is preserved, it is exactly the same as it was in its original state. If the vacuum is brokem the OJ would spoil and be useless in about 3 days. The flavor enhancments are distilled and concentrated directly from fresh oranges. It actually cheaper to do this than to synthesize them in a chemical vat. #4 The ammonia gas used to sterlize the beef is completely volatilzed and removed by gentle heating. Furthermore, your body actually produces ammonia as a by product in TONS on biochemical processes....if it didn't you would die. Even if some of the ammonia remains as a packagin error in certain cases, it would be purged from the beef upon cooking. Even so, it wouldn't hurt you. E-coli kills you really fast, and this sterlization method is a GREAT way to get rid of it. #3.....Yeah, the blueberry thing is pretty gross. #2...Chickens being crammed into cages is certainly sad, but it has no health detriments to us. Furthermore, if we didn't mass produce eggs like this, they would cost about $20.00 per dozen. A hen can produce about 1 egg per day, and they used to be classified as a delicassy. Without these production methods, 99% of the population would not be able to have eggs. #1...Marketing scams are as old as the dollar. Sticking some overblown offer on the package doesn't change the product inside. Just be aware the anything with a bonafied medical benefit usually has to come from a doctor. This one is easy to avoid. Sorry about the long winded post, but I think putting out exagerrated information by the organic crowd is just as bad as what they claim to be crusading against.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesI loved the humor ion this article but I loved jasonygd's response even more. Critical thinking skills need to be applied to everything because it seems that just about everything you read has an agenda of some sort behind it. Good response. I agree totally. But, we shouldn't be eating this crap anyway. OJ is all sugar (fructose, the worst kind if that is possible) and you can get more Vitamin C from green veggies.
haha!! my boyfriend learned about the ammonia thing and totally got all up in arms about it, i tried telling him that there is no reason to be upset so quickly w/o MORE of the facts. Some people jump to conclusions way too fast.
Why do you think eggs would cost about $20/dozen if they weren't mass produced? My parents have REAL free-ranged chickens (the kind that actually have the freedom to run around wherever they want outside), and sell the eggs for the same price as other free-ranged brands. They also give eggs away to friends and family. I get 3 dozen large eggs for free whenever I run out, and I eat a LOT of eggs. Also, even though it's not risking our health, chickens need their space. It's not fair for them to be crammed together just so we can get a product from them that we could do just find without, especially when it is pointless to cram them together. You would get the same exact amount of eggs if they were able to run around outside all day. You can lock them up at night when they go in to sleep, so wild animals can't kill them.
The ammonia thing was recently brought up in the news, because the government is moving to ban the process.
Does anyone else want to try a 100% real blueberry muffin now?
ReplyThey are amazing when compared to the ones made with artificial berries. I tend to go and buy cartons of berries (or sometimes the frozen ones) to make different baked goods and desserts.
Guys, calm down. This is a humor article. Poking fun at/ridiculing things is the author's job... So pull the tampons out of your uptight butts and chill the f**k out. Laugh a little, maybe people will like you more!
ReplyPresenting : a human whose eaten all those food.
Seriously? It's a article with warning and slice of humour, but if you it's not something to think and discuss about, or perhaps joke about menstruation..then I fear what those food done to you.
Ammonia is a gas. By the time you eat it, (unless the company has fucked up like in the example of the stinky burgers) it's all gone.
ReplyAnd it doesn't change the meat; Ammonia is a reducing agent, the opposite of an oxidizing agent, and it's oxidation that makes meat go bad.
Anyone who says this has never butchered and eaten genuinely fresh meat, untainted by the horrors of industrial farming, shipping and sales. You poor bastard.
Did the guy selling you the "ammonia gas machine" tell you that? Meat from animals that live their entire lives knee-deep in fecal matter pass disease quickly....If we just ate meat from healthy animals raised on farms instead of factories, we wouldn't even have to discuss if this was dangerous or not. There would be zero need for it.
Anyone who has taken a biochemistry course can tell you that there are quite a few exaggerations and misleading statements in this posting.
ReplyPlease, enlighten us :)
Just a few points on this...... #6 Cellulose is the main component in ALL plants....it is comepletely natural, and is the main component of plant cell walls. You can pick a celery stalk right out of the field, and it is about 75% cellulose....identical to that in wood. #5 Removal of oxygen in a vacuum perfectly preserves an organic product, even a year later, if the vacuum is preserved, it is exactly the same as it was in its original state. If the vacuum is brokem the OJ would spoil and be useless in about 3 days. The flavor enhancments are distilled and concentrated directly from fresh oranges. It actually cheaper to do this than to synthesize them in a chemical vat. #4 The ammonia gas used to sterlize the beef is completely volatilzed and removed by gentle heating. Furthermore, your body actually produces ammonia as a by product in TONS on biochemical processes....if it didn't you would die. Even if some of the ammonia remains as a packagin error in certain cases, it would be purged from the beef upon cooking. Even so, it wouldn't hurt you. E-coli kills you really fast, and this sterlization method is a GREAT way to get rid of it. #3.....Yeah, the blueberry thing is pretty gross. #2...Chickens being crammed into cages is certainly sad, but it has no health detriments to us. Furthermore, if we didn't mass produce eggs like this, they would cost about $20.00 per dozen. A hen can produce about 1 egg per day, and they used to be classified as a delicassy. Without these production methods, 99% of the population would not be able to have eggs. #1...Marketing scams are as old as the dollar. Sticking some overblown offer on the package doesn't change the product inside. Just be aware the anything with a bonafied medical benefit usually has to come from a doctor. This one is easy to avoid. Sorry about the long winded post, but I think putting out exagerrated information by the organic crowd is just as bad as what they claim to be crusading against.
I so agree with the final comment in this article. We'll probably still eat it, but I'd like to know the blueberries aren't real.
ReplyKILL THE FEAR MONGER I DON'T UNDERSTAND SATIRE RARRRRRR
ReplyI'm gonna drop a truthbomb of mass destruction on all of you. I'm a dietetics major (which is essentially clinical nutrition) and I can tell you right now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with eating cellulose. It's fiber, and I'd encourage all of you to eat more of it.
Reply Hide All See All 6 RepliesIt's actually fantastic that they found a way to synthetically insert it into foods since the North American diet is famously fiber deficient. Since the amount of vegetables in our diets has decreased, so has the amount of fiber aka cellulose. This is actually a win-win strategy for the food producers and consumers.
for all his 'let me tell you the truth about food' the author of this article indeed seems to be pretty ill-informed and easy to scare.
there is indeed nothing wrong with eating cellulose, it's just fiber: indigestible stuff that helps to move the digestible stuff through your intestines and gives a place for gut-bacteria to grasp onto and work their magic.
The way i see it, the problem lies not with the fact that cellulose has found its way into people's diets, but with the fact that companies purposely conceal the nature of their products. Sure, cellulose or "fiber" is quite important in diet, its the whole "Stupid consumer doesn't need to know the truth/is too dumb to understand" policy whats fucked up.
So why not save yourself a trip to the store, and just whittle off a piece of your furniture, put some MSG on it and call it dinner? To you, it's practically health food.
Since the amount of vegetables in our diets has decreased, so has the amount of fiber aka cellulose.
Then just eat more vegetables. Duh!
I have a funny feeling that Stephamillion is just trying to find a job with the "food" industry by trying to get us to eat wood pulp.
They will love ya Steph.
As a "dietetics major" I'm assuming this means that you are still studying clinical nutrition in a mainstream educational setting and have not yet graduated. This means that you are still learning about nutrition and its affects on the body. Mainstream educational programs don't teach about real nutrition, although they do cover some of the basics. And as you're still learning, you still have a lot of ground to cover before you become an expert and can render an expert opinion.
In actuality, the amount of fruit and vegetables available for our consumption has not decreased. Americans simply don't make those food choices because they are not educated by people who are honestly and completely knowledgeable about nutrition. They also choose the cheapest, fastest, and most convenient foods to eat. When you can buy two Big Macs for $3.50 and zip through the drive through, why would you take the time to go to a local farmer's market to buy the more expensive ingredients for a kale salad and go home to make it?
Secondly -- cellulose is wood pulp. It has no nutritional value whatsoever. It is inert. That means it takes up space as it passes through the body. It doesn't absorb toxins to remove them from the body, as does the fiber found in good ol' food. It does not provide nutrients to support the body, so while it provides bulk, the body literally starves while consuming it. The brain continues to signal for more food because it is not being nourished by a diet made up of foods comprised of ground up wood pulp. Certain animals and insects have the digestive enzymes and organs that are designed to obtain nutrition from eating trees, sticks, and twigs. Human beings are not equipped in this manner.
The scandal around this is because food producers use ground up wood pulp as a cheap extender and filler. It is used to replace real food ingredients in processed food products. In essence, it's easier and more profitable to sell repurposed wood pulp as food than it is to dispose of it, and the food companies don't have to pay farmers to raise food. Plus, wood pulp doesn't immediately kill anyone. So there are not any immediate risks to including it in processed foods.
As a dietetics major, if you are doing this to help people, I recommend that you step out of your comfort zone and do something really radical. Start educating yourself about real nutrition and what the food industry is really about. Including the FDA, pharma, etc.
Many posters here are complaining more about the writer's style than about the content. I agree that the writer of this article is doing the information a disservice. The flippant nature of the writing is extremely poor and off putting. However, the information is valid and can be corroborated. If any reader here came to the article out of more than mild curiosity, there is more intelligent information available elsewhere.
I'm not a dietetics major but I'm currently and till my death, pursuing a degree in common sense and rationale. You should too, since the issue being raised with cellulose is that it's being used as a filler and there's no regulation to it's amount. Then I'll tell you what I learned from grade school, cellulose is indigestible stuff without any nutritional value. Any grade schooler will ask why can't we eat leaves like those herbivores - it's because we can't f*****g digest it. Are you a cow?
Ehhh. I'm taking this as a joke, and I know the over-the-top style is supposed to be a joke. But I find the effect it has on most people is OMG THE FOOD INDUSTRY WANTS TO KILL US and it's a little annoying...
ReplyThe food industry is not trying to kill us. It is trying to make the largest profit legally possible. If it requires bending a few laws and reconfiguring a few regulations in order to make chemicals that would otherwise kill us be recognized by the law as food...well, perhaps it's YOUR interpretation that the food industry is trying to kill us. They are just trying to make a buck. If we die because we ingest toxic ingredients that their scientists say we should be able to handle in miniscule amounts........well. Collateral damage, I guess.
Well said, Kekelsay.
Ha! They said "but cracked" in #6. I'm immature for laughing at that.
ReplyWay to go Beavis.
God is American food industry so poverty stricken and deprived of funds that they can't use the basic ingredients that third world countries do? Why is it they they stretch their ingredients like people during the siege of Leningrad?
Replymost of the third world also eats this crap: after years of being fed the test-products and table-scratches of our food-industry under the veil of 'food-aid' they now prefer (free or sold-at-a-loss) 'western food' over their own home-grown crops.
I swear on the future grave of Albert P. Carey, that if you ever ruin anything produced by Frito-Lay I will persuade Steve Ballmer to stop killing Google, and focus on you instead.
Reply#6 makes me flinch, mostly because the thought of paper of any kind in my mouth makes me shudder and want to puke. D:
ReplyCellulose is how food companies boost the fiber content of their products; the "insoluble" kind. It is how General Mills can give their Fiber One product line such a high fiber content while maintaining some semblance of flavor. It is also how Pop-Tarts went from virtually no fiber to 20% over night (as cellulose is for all intents and purposes tasteless).
None of this is news. But if you just found out, hey! Welcome to life. I dare you to TRY and stop eating blueberry muffins.
ReplyMY blueberry muffins come from handpicked blueberries that I personally plucked after driving 30 miles to a relatively unknown field. Yup, I'm probably one of the few out there who has a freezer full of real bonafide blueberries.
I have. I no longer eat corn, wheat or soy either. The food industry knows you're all a bunch of uninformed wimps that are addicted to their "food." Keep making excuses, keep eating this garbage and then kick yourself when you are 60 and spending your remaining painful years dying in a hospital bed while the hospital and big pharma bleed you dry financially. Yeah, it's such a mystery why we're all so sick. It can't possibly be linked to what we are stuffing in our faces 24/7. Noooo, the TV and government say this stuff is okay. They also said lead in paint was a good idea, Agent Orange was safe, and more doctors preferred Camels over any other brand of cigarette.
If this stuff is new to you, you should read up on genetically engineered foods from sources that were NOT funded by biotech giants. Their data seems to be a teensy bit slanted.
All these people screaming how you can't digest cellulose! You can't digest fiber, either. You know, the thing doctors tell you to eat so you can poop enough to not die? The point of fiber is that you can't digest it, so it goes on through. Cellulose is just a particularly hardcore form of fiber. You can't eat a stick for mechanical reasons, which is the only reason it seems weird, but that stick of celery you ate to feel better about yourself? Same basic deal, you just chew it easier.
ReplyAlright, I'll sell you some sticks from my yard and a grinder. Enjoy. I'll just eat my organic produce that I grew myself and organic meat and dairy that was pasture raised and came from a farm I got to tour personally (and buy from directly). You keep your wood pulp and fight amongst yourselves. I'll stick with foods mother nature intended humans to eat and thrive on.
1 and 2 I already knew, BUT OJ???? I love orange juice, or rather, paper water
ReplyI literally was drinking a bottle of OJ when reading this. I stopped. Put it down. And said, "How dare you, Paper Water."
ReplyOmg, cellulose is completely indigestible and has NO nutrition value whatsoever and yet they're FEEDING IT TO US! OMG< RANT RANT RANT, except... wait. What's the difference between cellulose and fiber?
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesCellulose isn't used whatsoever, if anything, it causes digestion problems. As opposed to fiber, which is a 'broom' at least. Or I could be totally mistaken, and they're the exact same thing.
Plant cell walls are made of cellulose (and some messy stuff called lignin). The fiber in grains and veggies is cellulose. So, yes, cellulose is fiber and Hilo75 is "totally mistaken".
Fibre is good. Fibre where you expect there to be food is a recipe for malnutrition.
maybe the malnutrition will cancel out all the obesity, then.
I wasn't terribly horrified by any of this, though it is amusing. Also, store-bought blueberry muffins are just assholes in general. More calories than a full breakfast (including that delicious zombie OJ), silly amounts of carbs (though carbs are kinda important, Atkins...), not filling despite those two points (I don't have a good parenthetical aside for this... but it's lame), AND the not-blueberries (which you already knew about if you've ever had home-made).
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