Fwd: [SoFlaVegans] Don't be fooled by all natural claims

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Don't be fooled by " all natural " claims on foods and

grocery products

by Mike Adams

July 18 2007

 

http://www.newstarget.com/z021937.html

http://www.newstarget.com/021937.html

 

Factory food manufacturers have figured out that

slapping an " all natural " claim onto their processed,

chemically-altered food products results in increased

sales. Consumers, it seems, are trying to shop for

healthier foods, and they're easily fooled by " all

natural " claims, even though the vast majority of food

products sporting such claims are anything but

natural.

 

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not

regulate claims of " all natural. " They might claim to,

but in reality, they don't. Food companies can get

away with using all sorts of non-natural processes and

chemical ingredients in a food product that they claim

is all natural. For example, foods fried at high

temperatures, resulting in the formation of

cancer-causing acrylamides, are routinely labeled " all

natural " in the snack section of the grocery store.

And yet frying starches at high temperatures isn't

natural at all -- it's a human-invented process for

making boring foods like potatoes taste interesting by

loading them up with fat and salt.

 

The salt used in such foods isn't natural either. It's

almost entirely processed salt, and even the products

that claim to be made from " sea salt " are actually

using a white, processed sea salt (not a full-spectrum

brown or pink salt like you might find with Celtic Sea

Salt, which is truly natural).

 

Grocery product makers are also adding various

chemical additives to their " all natural " products,

hiding them under innocent-sounding ingredients that

don't raise red flags with consumers. Monosodium

glutamate (MSG), for example, is a neurotoxic

substance classified as an excitotoxin. Consuming it

causes migraine headaches, endocrine system damage,

loss of appetite regulation (leading to obesity),

neurological damage in fetuses (when consumed by

expectant mothers) and many other problems. This is

well known throughout the industry. Baby food

manufacturers, for example, voluntarily removed MSG

from their products decades ago following a public

outcry about the dangers of MSG to babies and infants.

 

And yet today, numerous " all natural " food companies

continue to use hidden forms of MSG in their foods,

hiding them under innocent-sounding ingredients like

yeast extract, autolyzed or hydrolyzed proteins (all

of which contain MSG). Even the companies you've grown

to trust in the " natural " food business are engaged in

the blatant hiding of MSG in their products. Pay

special attention to vegetarian food products such as

veggie burgers. Read the ingredients on everything you

buy and you'll find that the largest " natural " food

manufacturers still use hidden MSG.

 

(The newest ingredient to hide MSG under is called

torula yeast. Watch for it on labels.)

 

Click here to view our CounterThink cartoon on this

topic.

 

What's the definition of all-natural, anyway?

The truth is that food manufacturers can use just

about any ingredients or processes they want while

still claiming their foods are all-natural. They can

take whole wheat berries from nature, mill them down

and strip out 98% of the nutrients, bleach the flour

with chemicals, " enrich " the flour with synthetic

chemical vitamins, and then claim their wheat is " all

natural. "

 

And why is it natural? Because it comes from the

earth, they would say. It was grown by nature.

 

Sure it was, but then it was physically and chemically

modified, adulterated, contaminated and altered in

ways that destroy its natural properties. The final

product has no resemblance to anything truly natural.

 

In the food industry today, there's no official

definition of " all natural. " It means whatever the

food companies want it to mean. It can mean, for

example, that all the chemicals found in the product

simply aren't listed on the label. (There's no

requirement for food companies to list chemical

contaminants found in their foods.) A food labeled

" all natural " can contain pesticides, herbicides,

toxic heavy metals, trace amounts of PCBs, toxic

fluoride, hidden MSG, high-temperature cooking

byproducts, synthetic chemical vitamins and dozens of

other non-natural substances. This is all perfectly

allowed and tolerated by the FDA as well as all

virtually every media outlet in the world. Cable news

stations, magazines, newspapers and other media giants

are all too happy to take money from junk food

manufacturers and run their advertisements claiming

their foods are " all natural. " There is absolutely no

effort to determine whether such claims are really

true or even partially credible. Media companies

simply take the money and run the promotions,

regardless of whether such promotions tell the truth.

 

There is little truth left in the food industry

Consumers are a gullible bunch, and food manufacturers

have mastered the art of selling people crap while

getting them to believe it's actually good for them.

There's really no effort taken by the mainstream food

industry to make foods healthy; there's only an effort

to make them appear to be healthy. It's all about

marketing. The same junk food crap that wasn't labeled

with any health claims two years ago is now labeled

" all natural " and positioned in the healthy food

section of the grocery store. Same ingredients, new

spin. It's all about positioning.

 

All this doesn't mean there aren't some genuinely

natural products available in the marketplace today.

There are, but they aren't manufactured by the big

brand-name food companies. A few smaller, niche-market

companies are offering real food these days, but you

have to search them out. Companies like Ewehorn make

honest cereals with no garbage ingredients, and there

are lots of raw foods companies that produce truly

outstanding food products

(such as http://www.RawBakery.com). FoodsAlive

(http://www.FoodsAlive.com) also makes real food, as

do dozens of other companies I could mention.

 

But the real secret to being a smart, skeptical

consumer is to read the ingredients labels yourself.

Analyze the ingredients and ignore the health claims

on the front of the package. Health claims are

meaningless. Visit our informative article: How to

read ingredients labels to learn more.

 

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