Functional foods gain in popularity, but health claims on most brand-name grocer

[Guest guest]

Functional foods gain in popularity, but health claims on most brand-

name groceries mislead consumers

Monday, July 19, 2004 by: Mike Adams

 

http://www.newstarget.com/001420.html

---

 

 

 

Functional foods are gaining in popularity: big-name grocery product

manufacturers like Kraft are making huge R & D investments in bringing

these nutritionally enhanced foods to market. Likewise, customer

demand for healthier, enhanced foods is surging.

But here's the real story on functional foods: most health claims on

brand-name grocery store products are hogwash. Here's what I mean:

take the most popular brand of strawberry milk powder. It's made

primarily with refined white sugar, an ingredient known to promote

obesity, diabetes, mood swings and ADHD in children. On the front

label of this product, you'll find a claim about how it provides

100% of the daily requirement for calcium. This claim makes the

product appear healthy when, in fact, it's a product made with

ingredients that directly promote chronic disease. If anything, the

label should say, " Diabetes in a can! "

 

Most of the health claims on brand-name functional foods are, in

fact, misleading. The typical processed food product contains

refined carbohydrates, hydrogenated oils, and various chemical

additives like aspartame, MSG or artificial coloring. You can't make

this product healthy by adding a tiny dab of calcium, iodine or

lutein. The product is inherently unhealthy, and enhancing it with a

few milligrams of something that's good for you doesn't offset the

product's fundamental potential for harming your health.

 

In fact, the big food manufacturers really just exploit these health

claims to sell more products, not to fundamentally make their foods

healthier. They can take a highly toxic, disease-promoting

manufactured food item, dose it up with extra calcium,

slap a healthy-sounding claim on the front label, all with the full

approval of the FDA.

 

If anything, food manufacturers hide behind these health claims,

using them to camouflage unhealthy foods by adorning them with

labels and claims that make them appear to be healthful. Meanwhile,

the truly healthy foods aren't allowed to make any claims

whatsoever. Spirulina, for example, which is an extraordinary health-

enhancing superfood that contains phytonutrients, vitamins, minerals

and abundant protein, can't be sold with any health claims

whatsoever. Yet instant chocolate milk made primarily with sugar

can. How's that for food politics?

 

This is why I think health claims on brand-name foods are worse than

useless -- they're actually misleading to consumers. But they're

great marketing gimmicks, and people believe the claims, which is

why the big food makers want to keep slapping these claims on their

food products. The truth, however, is that virtually all the grocery

products manufactured by the big, popular food producers are

extremely bad for human health. They're made with an alarming

variety of metabolic disruptors -- ingredients that interfere with

normal human metabolism. Tossing in a few milligrams of ground of

sea shells (calcium powder) doesn't materially improve the health of

these products.