Food Labels are Confusing

It began with a local health-news report that led me to the Consumer Reports website. The problem: Food labels are confusing. Not all claims and seals on food packaging can be trusted. 

Consumer Reports wants to help shoppers by making sense of some of the more common labels. But the labels they refer to are the ones designed to lure uninformed shoppers, enticing them to pay more for imaginary benefits like all-natural, non-GMO and organic.

I’ve written before about the science behind GMO foods and organic growing practices. Genetic modification acts as a short cut to the crossbreeding that has been practiced in farming for thousands of years. In some cases it will be the only way to save certain crops from going extinct due to diseases or pests. Organic produce has been tested and found to be marginally cleaner than traditionally grown crops, but if you wash your fruits and vegetables before preparing them, as everyone should, it makes no difference. (See the links for a fuller explanation or enter GMO or Organic in the search box in the upper left of this screen.)

Consumer Reports lists 6 seals of certification rated from fair to excellent: Grass Fed, Certified Humane, Animal Welfare, Non-GMO Project Verified, United Egg Producers, and USDA Organic. A deeper dive tells more about the certification process of each. For example, United Egg Producers Certified is rated fair overall for being very good in terms of verification but poor for animal welfare. Three labels are rated poor: Natural or All Natural, No Antibiotics, Non-GMO.

At a local grocery store I found seven different varieties of large eggs. Prices ranged from $1.09 for one dozen generic eggs in a gray container to $5.79 for a dozen labeled as organic and pasture raised. Priced between them were the cage free; cage free brown; free range; and the no-hormone, no antibiotic eggs. Apparently people will pay five times more for eggs to be reassured that the hens were leading a happy life, frolicking in a pasture. Of course, there is no label to tell how the hens are treated after they reach their 5- to 7-year period of peak production.

These decisions are mostly made by people who have never seen a chicken, pig or cow close up or visited a farm. They get their news from websites like this one that claims “rearing of farm animals today is dominated by industrialized facilities…that maximize profits by treating animals not as sentient creatures…” Each animal, according to them, is a “social, feeling individual capable of experiencing pleasure. The vast majority, however, are only familiar with deprivation, fear, and pain.” (Perhaps they called in an animal psychic or Dr. Doolittle to confirm this statement.)

Another site, with a more realistic and less of a concentration camp concept of farms, contradicts the factual part of the above statements. “About 98% of U.S. farms are operated by families – individuals, family partnerships or family corporations (America’s Diverse Family Farms, 2018 Edition).”

 Is this another form of virtue signaling, paying almost $6 per dozen for eggs because we care so much about chickens we will never meet? It’s no wonder that earlier this month the headline read: Consumer debt reaches record-high of $14 trillion.” As long as the cows, pigs and chickens are happy, what’s five dollars here and there?

Perhaps instead of trying to make sense of the seals and claims to help you understand the meaning behind them, Consumer Reports should have published the fact that most of those are simply marketing tactics playing on the egos, guilt and fears of consumers following the popular sentiment of the day.

What comes in the next issue, how to buy the right saddle for your unicorn?

Being Careful About What You Eat

It looks like a number of essays recently have been about food, but since I steer away from politics to show more everyday behavior, the healthy food stories tend to jump out. I found a number of fairly recent stories about whether being picky about our food is worth the effort. 

The marketing departments of food companies go out of their way to make us feel guilty about eating the wrong things and to reassure us that we are making wise food decisions. But how much is true and how much is hype?

Many packages are labeled as healthy. Does that have any real meaning? 

The FDA is in the process of redefining their guidance on this subject, updating it from the 2016 version that read in part: “this guidance is intended to advise food manufacturers of our intent to exercise enforcement discretion relative to foods that use the implied nutrient content claim 'healthy' on their labels which:

(1) Are not low in total fat, but have a fat profile makeup of predominantly mono and polyunsaturated fats; or
(2) contain at least ten percent of the Daily Value (DV) per reference amount customarily consumed (RACC) of potassium or vitamin D.”

They conclude “guidances describe our current thinking on a topic and should be viewed only as recommendations.” All that seems as clear as mud! So we keep seeing "healthy" on all sorts of packages.

What about organic? The government does have strict guidelines about what can be considered organic, but still there is no guarantee. As this article from last October shows: “Three Nebraska farmers will plead guilty to knowingly marketing non-organic corn and soybeans as certified organic as part of a lengthy, multi-million-dollar fraud scheme.” This had been going on for many years.

A few months earlier, this news came from the Genetic Literacy Project. “The U.S. Department of Agriculture fails at regulation of organic food as fraudulent products overwhelm the agency’s conflicted, compromised system.”

Furthermore, as I discussed in detail last May, the USDA organic program allows some pesticides not classified as synthetic, and tests only for those pesticides disallowed by the program. Organic pesticides are not necessarily safer and all products – organic or synthetic – have the potential to be toxic. The careful approach is not in the food supply but in food preparation, as in washing all fruit and vegetables thoroughly.

 The use of natural is even foggier.

The FDA has asked for pubic comment “on the use of this term in the labeling of human food products” as a result of three citizen petitions asking for a clear definition, another one asking that the term be prohibited on labels and several court cases requested clarification.

 It leaves us asking whether these terms are really helpful or just the usual advertising jargon. It shouldn’t surprise us when, just last month there was a nationwide recall of more than 68,000 pounds of “gluten free Organics Breaded Chicken Breast Nuggets.” But they sounded so healthy and natural!

It takes some critical thinking to get to the bottom of all this, but what is really called for here is a dose of perspective. There was a time when everyone didn’t worry so much about the credentials of their food. Many were just happy to have it. And that went for everything we put in our mouths. Consider the study a couple of years ago that cleaner surroundings were not necessarily healthier for infants, making them more prone to developing allergies. And books like Let Them Eat Dirt, warned about the dangers an over-sanitized world posed for children.

Yet advertisers find that these words, and others like green and sustainable, can have an almost hypnotic effect, causing consumers to turn off their critical thinking and just trust the labels.

Environmentally Friendly?

Most people don’t know where most of our products come from – what raw materials are used, how they are manufactured, etc.   That makes it very hard to judge what is and is not environmentally friendly.

A few years ago some analysis revealed that a holistic assessment of ethanol’s environmental footprint from planting and harvesting through the point of burning it as a fuel in automobiles might be worse than the same consideration for gasoline. The farming, refining and transportation end of the businesses are also relevant. And as it burns it releases the same CO₂ into the atmosphere at almost the same levels on a per-mile basis.

The same is true of many other products. That’s why I wasn’t surprised by the news that plastic grocery bags could be better for the environment than organic cotton ones.

That news came last spring from a study conducted by the Danish Environmental Protection Agency (DEPA). They measured the environmental impact of the standard plastic bag against “the organic lifecycle of seven common materials used for shopping bags…along 16 different environmental parameters, including climate impact, ozone impact, human and environmental toxicity and water use.”

According to the DEPA spokesperson, “The results showed that plastic bags made out of ‘LDPE plastic’, like the ones found in grocery stores, have by far the lowest impact on the environment. The biggest environmental impact was assigned to the organic cotton bag; it has to be used at least 149 times to offset its climate impact, compared to 43 times for a regular paper bag.” Note that people often buy the “organic” cotton believing they are doing the environment a favor.

At the end of the report, they recommended that any bag should be reused as many times as possible, for example, using the plastic grocery bags to line small trash cans. Note that if they were reused even once, would they be almost 300 times environmentally friendlier than an organic cotton bag? 

But it doesn’t end there!  Remember those reports earlier this month about the researchers at the Helsinki-Vantaa Airport, the main airport in Finland, finding that the place most filled with germs and bacteria was not the toilet seats but the trays used in the pre-flight screening process? They were teeming with disease-causing viruses. The same can be true of reusable cloth grocery bags and shoppers don’t realize that danger or guard against it.

As the Chicago Tribune reports: “Most shoppers -- 97%, in fact -- reported that they do not regularly, if ever, wash the bags.” About 75% report that they do not use separate bags for meats and for vegetables, while almost one-third use the same bags for other non-food items.

When they tested a sample of the bags (84) for bacteria, they found some contamination in all but one.  The full report can be found at Assessment of the Potential for Cross Contamination of Food Products by Reusable Shopping Bags.

"It is estimated that there are about 76,000,000 cases of foodborne illness in the United States every year. Most of these illnesses originate in the home from improper cooking or handling of foods. Reusable bags, if not properly washed between uses, create the potential for cross-contamination of foods.” And if they must be washed between uses, that further adds to their environmental impact by water use, and it shortens their life.

  

So while some cities and states are moving to ban the bags, they are not considering all the diverse factors that go into the problem. It’s pretty typical of legislators to pass laws that address a surface problem to make them and their constituents feel good, while ignoring many details that might lead to an opposite conclusion.

What Do These Stories Say About Our Country?

I was stunned when I saw an advertisement in the local grocery circular for Spaghetti O’s Organic. I have written many times about how organic foods are no more nutritious than the non-organic, how pesticides used in organic farming can be more dangerous than conventional pesticides and generally how consumers are paying more for a mythical “healthy halo” associated with words like natural and organic.

Intrigued, I went looking for those Spaghetti O’s at the store and found, as expected, that the price was about 35% higher for substantially the same product: same size can with very similar ingredients and nutritional value.  (The original had 10 more calories and a little more sugar.) Taking that 35% and applying it to the average family grocery bill of $600 per week* gives a potential waste of $210 per week or nearly $11,000 per year. Of course it is currently impossible to substitute organic for everything on the grocery list, but each individual choice is contributing to a part of that potential of $11,000. 

* Estimate is based on the low end of the Official USDA Food Plans: Cost of Food at Home, “Thrifty” Plan, U.S. Average, April 2018, so the potential waste for many families could be higher (up to double).

But we are not just talking about kids’ food. This equally shocking report came from the CBS Sunday Morning show a few weeks back. Celebrities are endorsing recreational marijuana in states where it’s legal. Tommy Chong, from the Cheech and Chong marijuana movies, Willie Nelson, Snoop Dog, Melissa Etheridge and Whoopi Goldberg are putting their names on products as a marketing ploy to enhance sales. As the pot marketing expert told CBS, “stores can basically charge an average of a 25% markup over the same type of product that doesn't have a celebrity name on it."  

So people are willing to pay 35% more for canned pasta and 25% more for their weed, based on the packaging, with no substantial difference in the product.  These are the same Americans who stress about retirement insecurity.  Fifty percent don’t have $1000 set aside for an auto repair or a medical emergency and one in four couldn’t come up with $100 in a pinch.

Meanwhile, instead of offering advice on how to live a more financially stable life, the news media fills us with more reasons to spend money needlessly, because Americans are so focused on celebrity endorsements and fads.  We are fed stories about how the Mediterranean diet is being replaced by the Nordic diet as the healthiest way to eat, apparently because it replaces the focus on olive oil with a preference for rapeseed oil/canola oil.  New fads bump out the older ones, but some can't even keep up. Things are changing so fast ; the news cycle and the viral cycle have accelerated to the point where it is no longer profitable for companies to print today's memes on t-shirts. By the time they hit the shelves, they are out of date – and no one wants to be seen in a shirt with a wise or funny saying or image that’s no longer relevant!  What would your friends think?

These are just a few examples of a serious shortage in critical thinking and perspective. Doesn’t it make you want to roll your eyes, shake your head, and hope that people come to their senses soon?

Food Labeling

It’s interesting how many food items are being relabeled to take advantage of all the misinformation in the news and on social media. They label food as containing no high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). That simply means it contains sugar instead.  One is no better or worse for you than the other. If something is labeled as containing no sugar, it’s likely to contain an artificial sweetener. There are all kinds of rumors about how dangerous artificial sweeteners are. Some are labeled as no sugar added, but may have more natural sugar than a comparable product without the label. Everyone should easily be able to figure out that these special labels make little difference to the actual wholesomeness of the food. So why do the food companies make such an effort?

Apparently, it’s because most people don’t go to the trouble to figure this out.  The labels are shortcuts allowing them to follow their superstition of choice – yes, superstition. They are no different than the Salem Witch Trials except no one is killed, but they use the same tactics of mass hysteria.  Someone or some group pick up the chant of avoiding sugar or HFCS or artificial anything or GMOs or gluten (for most healthy people) and people choose to ignore evidence and climb on board the Superstition Express. 

One of the worst cases is the anti-GMO movement. The unreasonable opposition to GMOs starves people and adds to climate change. The promise of increased yields from smaller fields along with reduced reliance on pesticides and fertilizers supports the effort to reduce greenhouse gases and should be embraced by anyone concerned about climate change, but they pick and choose their cause. Mitch Daniels, president of Purdue University, calls the stance against GMOs both anti-science and immoral emphasizing the absence of evidence that these products have hurt anyone or have been a detriment to the environment –“no disruption of an ecosystem nor any adverse human health or even digestive problems, after 5 billion acres have been cultivated cumulatively and trillions of meals consumed.” It’s a distraction and political football that keeps good food from hungry people in less-developed countries.

The typical reaction is referred to in this article as the “healthy halo.” Food companies have found that certain labels elicit a positive response, regardless of logic, making consumers more likely to buy and more likely to pay more. To test this, researchers from Cornell University asked 115 shoppers to give their opinions of the value of snack foods based only on their labels. “People thought foods labeled ‘organic’ were more nutritious, lower in fat, and higher in fiber than the ‘regular’ foods, and were willing to pay up to 23.4 percent more for the food labeled as organic.” The difference was in the labels only: all the study participants were eating the same foods. The ink is cheap and the ability to increase the price by over 20 percent merely by adding one word to the label would be a marketing homerun for any company! And millions of superstitious Americans let them get away with it.

The manufacturers don’t care. And if it gives them an advantage in the market, they will even endorse any error or misconception their customers may have. It’s really sad.

Foods That May Kill You

Nothing the media and others like better than to find ways to scare us.  If one subject works, gets followers or assists in raising funds, we hear it over and over.  A reliable standby continues to be food safety.  Here are two examples: one with an erroneous, but widely believed, message; and one with possibly serious, but mostly ignored, consequences.

Everyone should know that when you pick fruits or vegetables from the garden or fresh at the grocery store, they must washed (sometimes soaked) before anyone eats them.  If this is not yet common knowledge, it would be quite reasonable to start a campaign to inform and remind the public.  Instead for the last 15 years we have gotten the "Dirty Dozen" list from the Environmental Working Group (EWG).  They use inspections of popular fruits and vegetables to rank them according to pesticide contamination.

“EWG emphasizes studies that show pesticides in high concentration can lead to health problems, especially in young children.” But they fail to point out that the resulting levels, based on USDA- and FDA-sponsored tests of almost 39,000 non-organic fruit and vegetable samples “found that overall pesticide chemical residues…are far below what has been scientifically deemed tolerable for human consumption…[and] do not pose a health risk.”  Nevertheless, the group, characterized by CBS in this report as an “activist group,” continues to peddle the fear.

Notice that the list is based only on non-organic fruits and vegetables, which allows the EWG to promote organic food.  But there’s a catch.  As another site correctly points out:  “Your Organic Food Is Treated With Pesticides, Too.” Not only that but the USDA organic program allows some pesticides not classified as synthetic, and tests for only those pesticides disallowed by the organic program.  “So the EWG is reporting the stuff on conventional crops without considering what’s present on organic crops.”  That makes a difference, because according to What Gardeners Should Know About Pesticides(Purdue Extension PPP109), organic pesticides “are not necessarily safer” and “all products – organic or synthetic – have the potential to be toxic.  In some cases, buying organic might expose you to more pesticide residues, just a different pesticide.

Forbes calls the list “an egregious, science-free misinterpretation," and adds "What that [USDA] data actually demonstrates is the outstanding safety profile of the U.S. food supply, but EWG twists it into an argument for consumers to pony up the extra dollars to buy organic.”

In contrast, there is a frequently disregarded real danger, not within the food supply itself but in the realm of food preparation.  The USDA stresses on their website the absolute necessity of following proper procedures in handling, cooking, and storage of food.  This includes washing of all fresh fruit and vegetables, but it goes beyond that.  The experts also stress the need to cook beef, pork, veal, lamb, steaks, chops, roasts to a minimum internal temperature of 145 °F and allow a rest time of at least 3 minutes. (It keeps cooking when it rests.)  The reason for these precautions is that it is impossible to “see, smell, or taste harmful bacteria that may cause illness.”

But it has been the trend for quite some time to order steaks medium-rare. Those of us who prefer our steaks cooked longer are considered gauche and uncivilized.  “At Porter House New York in Midtown, executive chef and co-owner Michael Lomonaco says more than 60 percent of his customers order medium-rare.”  How does this compare to the recommendations?  “Most chefs regard beef cooked to medium-rare – with an internal temperature of 130 degrees off the grill and 135 degrees after resting – as the best way to bring out flavor and retain moisture in tender cuts such as rib-eye and top loin.”  That’s about 15 degrees out of the safe zone.

But a second problem compounds the first.  If a steak is overcooked and sent back to the kitchen, the only recourse is to cook another one.  But if a steak is undercooked and sent back, it can be cooked a little more, avoiding waste and financial loss.  It makes better business sense to give a customer a slightly undercooked steak, pushing up the possibility of illness a bit more.

So once again we find an example of Americans getting upset, changing behavior and spending more money based on faulty information, while they ignore valid advice about a real potential problem.  All we need to do is wash our fresh produce and cook our meat a little more, and there is nothing to worry about.

Food Production Differences

Since I read this information about different methods of food production on a four-year-old posting, it should be fairly well known.  Unfortunately forces are at work, misrepresenting and politicizing what should be straightforward, honest information.  Let’s get back to the basics.

There are a number of ways to develop seeds used to grow our food:  Conventional breeding, mutagenesis and Genetic Engineering (GE).  

The first can be split into two categories.  Purists prefer heirloom vegetables.  “Most heirlooms come from seed that has been handed down for generations in a particular region or area, hand-selected by gardeners for a special trait.”  Usually they were developed over 50 years ago in the early days of commercial breeding.  They tend to have relatively stable characteristics from generation to generation.

Hybrid veggies on the other hand are the result of intentional cross-pollination of two different plant varieties to try to capture the best traits of each such as bigger size, earlier fruit bearing or better disease resistance.  Cross-pollination may also happen in nature without human intervention.  “The process of developing a hybrid typically requires many years.”  Unlike heirlooms, if you save the seeds from hybrids, the new plants will not retain the same advantageous traits as the original and may show other unexpected characteristics.

Technically, all seeds have been modified over many thousands of years as early farmers collected seeds from the best plants in an attempt to improve flavors and yield.  (A quick Internet search shows pictures of how unappetizing these ancient crops really were.)

Genetically Engineered (GE) crops are well known due to a bad reputation invented and spread by non-scientists and fear-mongers, most of whom have an interest in promoting organic products or raising funds for their environmental projects.  These fears are further spread on social media by the uninformed and are totally unfounded.  

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) states very clearly, based on hundreds of studies:  “Credible evidence has demonstrated that foods from the GE plant varieties marketed to date are as safe as comparable, non-GE foods.”  They explain that traditional cross-breeding also introduces a number of genes into a plant, and both are done for the same reasons. No person has ever been harmed by eating GE foods; there is no link to cancer.  They increase yields and lower pesticide applications, which is good for the environment.  Golden Rice, a GE crop, was developed to reduce blindness in Third-World children that don’t get enough vitamin A in their diets.

The other way to modify seeds is called mutagenesis, “wherein plants are subjected to radiation treatments or doused in toxic chemicals that randomly scrambles genes to produce new traits.”  They then plant the seeds to see what comes ups and keep trying until there seems to be a desirable improvement.  “Despite the fact that this process is much less precise than genetic modification…mutagenesis is unregulated and widely used.”  

Mutagenesis sounds much scarier and haphazard than GE, yet it receives little attention, has no one screaming for labels “so we know what we are eating,” has the potential for more unintended genetic changes and can be sold as organic!  Both are deemed safe for human and animal consumption.

So why the emphasis on and fear around GE crops? Despite having been proven false over and over, some continue to warn of dangers.  And we never see news reports that yet another study reaffirms the safety of GE crops.  Others, who have a direct stake in organics, call for GMO labeling supposedly calling for clarification, but really hoping the misinformed public will erroneously see them as warning labels and needlessly spend more money on organic food.  With a coordinated campaign and a few ardent followers, it’s easy to scare people into making foolish choices.

Some research suggests that the environment, year-to-year temperature changes and location, “has more impact on the plant’s genome than whether it was genetically modified or conventionally bred.” In reality, food safety should be based on the product itself rather than the method used to develop the variety.

But this is what happens when rumors abound, when advocates push an agenda until it achieves a “common knowledge” or urban myth status, and when Americans don’t exercise the critical thinking so crucial to survival in an increasingly complex society.  How do you modify your behavior when you realize that no one else is looking out for your best interests?

Looking for That Magic Bullet

When it comes to health and diet, Americans more and more are looking for the “magic bullet,” one or two easy answers to let them stay healthy and live forever.  That is the only rational explanation I can come up with to explain the constant parade of generally irrational food crazes.

On this CBS This Morning segment they hit on the “craft food craze” by reference to a high-end chocolate company that found itself in hot water for adding re-melted chocolate from another brand to their artisanal candy bars (that sell for $9 each).  The Mast Brothers responded “they only did so in their early days and never lied to consumers. This has sparked a larger debate about so-called ‘artisanal’ products and why consumers are willing to pay more for them.”

During the course of the discussion with a Wall Street Journal reporter, they mention other such crazes:  natural, GMO or gluten-free.  Apparently 59% of consumers look for “natural” on products, apparently not understanding that the FDA has never defined the use of the term.  Natural can mean whatever the company wants it to mean.  Yet shoppers look for the word believing they are getting something of better quality and last year spent $40 billion on food products labeled as such.

Likewise 66% look for “locally produced” products.  I wrote last month about how Chipotle, after loosening their original definition of locally produced by expanding the radius, then moved away from the concept toward more centralization to ensure better quality after a few embarrassing incidents of contamination.  The fact is that food moves around.  For every local farmer you try to support, there is a truck driver hoping for a shipment.  Time from farm to table is controlled not only by the travel time, but also the time between picking and loading (usually unknown), time unloading and sitting on the store shelf (usually unknown) and time it sits at home before being served (known, but how well managed? – unless someone goes grocery shopping on a daily basis).  Very little of this makes sense when examined closely.

Along a similar line, about this time last year CNBC (and others) reported:  “A full 88 percent of consumers say they're willing to pay a premium to some degree for foods with healthy attributes, according to Nielsen's online poll of 30,000 people in 60 countries.”  The all-natural or non-GMO labels were considered very important in this decision by about 43 percent.

Because we are reacting to the advertising, I have called these trigger words.  But the advertising must be appealing to something already in the grocery shopper’s mind, planted there by blogs using scare tactics (like if you can’t pronounce it – don’t eat it) and television doctors promising miracles.  It’s a vicious cycle where shoppers get ideas about healthier food that businesses use to think up alluring labels.  The underlying cause of the whole thing seems to be a search for some kind of shortcut. 

A few years ago the food was not dangerous.  It didn’t kill or harm people.  It may not have been “all natural” or “organic” or “artisan,” but it was perfectly safe to eat and most were OK with it that way.  A few years ago we did not have 66% of Americans overweight or obese either.  I am not saying that these new crazes for “healthier” food are responsible for the obesity.  Rather, it seems the buzzwords on food labels offer a promise, a promise of a better life for just a few dollars more, and that is a lot easier to stomach (pun intended) than the really hard work of hitting the treadmill, reducing serving sizes and making better basic choices of regular food without regard to the buzzwords.

Personally, when grocery shopping I will continue to avoid labels like all-natural, non-GMO, organic, and the rest; because I have done the research and know that I am getting very little, if any, benefit for the extra money.  Unfortunately, it is getting harder and harder.  At the same time that we hear politicians and local charity organizations talk about the problem of food insecurity among some, the rest are buying into all these crazes, abandoning foods that don’t meet these new definitions of healthy, thereby causing manufacturers to adapt, pushing the prices up for everyone; and again the poor are the ones who are hurt the most. 

More Food for Thought

When they launch a rocket, to resupply the space station for example, the fuel is liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen.  When they combine, it causes a big explosion, which provides the thrust for the rocket.  The residue of this explosion is water vapor, H₂O.  When the vapor cools and condenses into drops and falls to the earth as rain, does anyone suspect that this rain is not the same as the other water falling from the sky?  Is it considered dangerous or looked on with suspicion because it is synthetic or man-made as opposed to being natural?  Do parents worry more about their children being caught in the rain near Cape Canaveral because of this possibility?   It wouldn't come as a surprise since we seem to decide what to be scared of without regard to science.

According to a Yale/Gallup poll from last month, 71 percent of Americans are personally convinced that global warming is happening.  At the same time about 40 percent “believed there is a lot of disagreement among scientists.”  They conclude, “many Americans appeared to have already made up their minds, without waiting for a perceived scientific consensus.”  Well, science is about evidence and not consensus anyway, but compare this with the GMO scare.

About 90 percent of Americans are concerned enough about GMOs to favor a requirement that they be labeled as such, despite the fact that a consensus of scientists agree that they are safe and a “large scientific study from 2013 found no significant hazards directly connected with the use of genetically engineered crops."  In this case, a recent Pew Research Center survey finds that “two-thirds of the Americans they interviewed think scientists themselves don't fully understand all of the ways GMOs could affect health.”

What are the long term implications when so many Americans make up their minds about scientific issues on the basis of what they think should be the answer and justify it by declaring that the scientists don’t know for sure either?

In the end it’s all about marketing.  If you frown and say “chemical fertilizer,” you will hear a chorus of boos; but if you smile and say “plant food,” they haul out the Miracle-Gro sprayers.  People will trust and believe in anything they buy at a “health food” store, despite the fact that these packages are more likely to contain contaminants or be inaccurately labeled.  To solve the GMO fear, maybe they just have to call it something like crop enrichment instead.

See how we are controlled and manipulated by marketing and social media when we let our emotional responses override our critical thinking!

And Yet Another Crisis (or two)

This is a continuation of the themes from last time:  behavior has consequences (of course) and failures in the area of discipline often lead to failures in responsibility, such as finding scapegoats, making excuses or getting someone else to fix the problem.  Last time we saw how a watchdog group blames soft drinks for obesity, experts blame technology and addiction for insufficient sleep, and pretty much the same underlying causes are used to explain distracted driving.

The experts and the watchdog groups have a stake in and benefit from making victims of people, but so many others, especially the people with the problem themselves, are very quick to take up the cause.  Ultimately when we put the responsibility on others – government, scientists, big business, our employers – we are forced to live with their proposed solutions.  We surrender our freedom for the convenience of not having to deal with it, but so many of those solutions have unintended consequences and even those who have acted responsibly have these new forms of protection forced upon them.  How many more examples do we need before we smarten up and see the danger?

Two more came to our attention during the same timeframe.  CBS News reported on both:  backseat auto safety and deceptive, seductive food labels.

Experts (more experts!) look at the failure to use seat belts by backseat passengers as a potentially “deadly and mind-boggling mistake” and believe that “if states have stricter seatbelt laws, the number of deaths could drop by 17 percent.”  “Department of Transportation data show 22 percent of backseat passengers do not buckle up,” but much higher in taxicabs – 38 percent in New York City.  Riding in the back seat can be just as dangerous as riding in the front seat.  Buckling a seatbelt is not difficult.  The seatbelts are right there.  This is not rocket science by any means, but our normal behavior moves experts and the government to call for stricter laws!

The second example explains that using the word “fitness” on a food label “may actually cause you to eat more and exercise less.”  Researchers set up an experiment where half the subjects were given trail mix and the other half were given the same trail mix labeled “fitness trail mix.”  The second group ate more and, when given the opportunity to workout on a stationary bike afterward, burned fewer calories, that is, didn’t exercise as much.

The doctor makes reference to the “health halo” (what I have called on many occasions, trigger words.*  Labeling that implies health or fitness gives a false sense of security.  She goes on to warn:  “Just because it says gluten-free or organic or sugar-free or healthy doesn’t mean” it is good for you.  One conclusion she came to was to “never…underestimate the power of marketing.”  But isn’t that just another way of saying never underestimate the inability of Americans to ignore attempts to influence them into doing something that they know is bad for them?

As I said last time, this is really, really scary.  Many Americans are letting the government, marketing machines, politicians, advocacy groups, and celebrities do their thinking for them.  They are just along for the ride, going wherever they are led, eating whatever they are told they should eat, buying and wearing clothing considered cool, self-medicating with herbal remedies and miracle cures, and demonstrating for or against whatever they are told they should favor or oppose.  When problems crop up in their lives, problems that are usually brought on by their own choices, instead of changing behavior and making better choices, they sit back like victims of circumstance, expecting the same groups to provide excuses (to help them maintain their self-esteem) and come up with laws, programs, restrictions and consumer protection to make things better.  Those solutions are working so well that America is getting, to quote the Reader’s Digest from last time, “fat, sick and stupid”!

*For more on "trigger words," see any of the following:

Are We Over-Scienced?

Any Diet Will Do

Questioning Ancient Wisdom

Cute Puppies and Kittens

When is a Dollar not a Dollar?