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.

One More Time: Detox

It was almost exactly a month ago that I wrote about the potential dangers of the various detox regimens that were being pressed by numerous health gurus. Now, I never intended this to become a health-oriented blog. It really couldn’t be, because to be popular I would be forced to come up with some guaranteed quick and easy formula, packed with endorsements, ancient wisdom, scientific sounding pronouncements and unspecified clinical trials that treats a long list of ailments. The critical thinking in me, not to mention the integrity, wouldn’t have any part of it.

But I always try to pass along some of that critical thinking to readers by citing examples; and to my surprise, in one short month the subject of detox came up again. This time the emphasis was not necessarily on safety, but on the overall effectiveness.

The main source was a brief, four-minute video on the Vox website with the headline: “Products that promise ‘detox’ are a sham. Yes, all of them. Though they have a long history of duping us.” The video is interesting and worth a quick look.

In brief, they say that a research group asked detox marketers exactly what toxins they were getting rid of and none could give a satisfactory answer. It’s based on erroneous historical medical practices; and unless it is used to treat severe alcohol or drug poisoning,  detox is not necessary and worthless. They label it a health pseudo-science and conclude by saying, “Before you succumb to this incredibly appealing notion, you should know that the idea of using some product to ‘detox’ is nonsense. But this hasn’t stopped clever marketers from selling the idea that we can become, somehow, less toxic by using special products.”

Only a couple of days later an ad came in my email linked to a very long video by a former pediatric heart surgeon promoting his dietary supplement. The same video is found here, where it’s described as “a power wash for your insides.” 

According to the doctor, if you have digestive issues, food cravings, weight gain, morning soreness, low energy and all those skin, mood and health issues, he has the answer. Anyone can restore the healthy body he or she used to have, inside and out.

His discovery is based on "shocking new information" and "a remarkable scientific breakthrough!" There is something wrong inside you and it’s not your fault. He bases this on his experience and impressive medical background – even though, according to him, almost all the other doctors don’t understand. He left his practice to promote this product full-time, because 

all those problems start in the gut where toxins leak into the system.

This is followed by a number of stories about ordinary people and celebrities. He wrote a book, but understands that people who are suffering don’t have time to read all the books. So he came up with a supplement that doesn’t require seeing a doctor or going to a lab. It’s an all-natural pill, based on ancient tradition that you can simply buy from him and take everyday. 

Of course, beneath the video is the usual disclaimer: “The information on this website has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.”

There in one neat package are all the ingredients I have warned about: quick and easy, ancient, natural, celebrity endorsed, revolutionary, scientific, exclusive, a long list of ailments, etc. It is a pill, not the traditional detox, though it did contain the word detox in the headline. Rather it’s based on the idea of “leaky gut syndrome,” which I found on Quackwatch characterized as a fad diagnosis, “not recognized by the scientific community” and a “figment of pseudoscientific imagination."

Several years ago as I was headed into work, I observed one colleague telling another about her fabulous detox weekend – as she sat in the sun smoking a cigarette – enough said!

Natural Food and Holy Water

True story: Some years ago an older woman visiting her Catholic church noticed the baptismal font was empty. She saw the maintenance worker nearby and told him about it. She was shocked when she saw him run a garden hose through the window to refill it. He explained that the priest would come by to bless it later. 

In a sense natural food is a lot like holy water. It is often as much about faith as anything else. And now people are fighting like a bunch of theologians about what is and is not natural.

The question arises from a lawsuit against LaCroix sparkling water. The company advertises that the beverage contains no calories or artificial flavors and that it is enhanced with natural essences. But what those essences are is a trade secret. Customers don’t have a clue as to the meaning of “naturally essenced” written on the cans. They assume that natural means good. 

But the class-action lawsuit filed last month claims that “LaCroix's all-natural claims are false and that these natural ingredients are actually synthetic.” Although some of the ingredients can be derived naturally, they are listed by the FDA as synthetic and can be found in such products as insecticides. “Popular Science breaks down why the argument doesn't seem to hold up, noting that none of the ingredients mentioned in the case are considered dangerous.”

This is reminiscent of the “devastating news” a few years ago about wood fiber in grated cheese. Actually it was cellulose, but wood fiber sounds scarier. It’s used to reduce clumping, but some companies were adding more than the allowable 4%. No one was hurt and the fuss was far out of proportion to any actual impact. It was more about the principle of purity and the fact that wood fiber in cheese makes a good headline.

Another example comes from the makers of Prevagen, a highly advertised memory supplement derived from jellyfish protein. A minor problem is that they don’t actually get the protein from jellyfish. They synthesize it in the lab. A much bigger problem is that it has not been shown to be effective – it doesn’t do what it claims.

But the natural labelling issue is troubling for some. The main objection is the lack of a clear definition for the term as shown in the following statement. “Although the FDA has not engaged in rulemaking to establish a formal definition for the term ‘natural,’ we do have a longstanding policy concerning the use of ‘natural’ in human food labeling. The FDA has considered the term ‘natural’ to mean that nothing artificial or synthetic...has been added….” 

But does a formal definition make that much difference? There is no question that green tea is natural. BBC Good Food told us about it last July. “With origins going back as far as 5,000 years, green tea is commonly drunk and widely grown in the Far East where the health properties are well regarded.” Later in the same article they say that evidence of its health benefits are "largely inconclusive" and that although “many ‘health’ products now include traces of green tea…there is limited evidence to suggest these products are effective.”

Last week came a sterner warning from BBC Health on the same subject. “When Jim McCants started taking green tea pills he had hoped he was giving his health a shot in the arm. Instead, it appears the pills caused such serious damage to his liver that it required an urgent transplant.” Though this is highly unusual, it can happen.

So natural doesn’t necessarily mean healthy; it doesn’t even always mean safe. Many other substances are natural and not safe, nicotine, for example. The shock when people hear this is like finding out holy water can come from a garden hose. It drives many into denial.

The difference is that holy water is a matter of faith and healthy food is a matter of science. What’s important is whether it is safe and beneficial, not whether it’s natural (whatever that means).

Fear of Science and Technology

Last week I attended a presentation on GMOs by a Purdue University professor in the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology. He was very knowledgeable with impressive credentials, but he said things some people didn’t want to hear. 

The primary point of contention was that a vast majority (near 90%) of scientists agree that genetically modified plants are safe to eat, but only 37% of the general public agree. Somehow when a majority of scientists are cited as agreeing with man-made global warming, everyone is so convinced that they will try to cut off any further discussion; they shudder to think of the US pulling out of the Paris Agreement; but when a majority of scientists say that GMOs are safe to eat, they must all be working for Monsanto. 

The difference is that climate change is not as scary as eating something potentially harmful. The resistance arises from a fear of something that sounds very unnatural.

However, the speaker pointed out that farms, and agriculture in general, is not natural. Even in backyard gardens, people remove the weeds that naturally grow to plant seeds that have been developed through thousands of years of selection. As nature caused genetic modifications in plants, people preserved those with the best characteristics: size, juiciness, drought-resistance. Humans have been eating and enjoying unnatural foods for millennia (fresh from the garden).

Furthermore, the introduction of plant science has enabled great leaps forward in agriculture, allowing farmers around the world to feed the growing population, now 7.6 billion. For example, the average yield of corn per acre in the US in 1900 was 25.9 bushels per acre. That increased to 77.4 by 1965 and to 137.0 by 2000. The yield in 2017 was 176.6 bushels per acre. The application of science increased the amount of corn by almost 7 times when it would have been impossible to increase the acreage.

But the myth exists that natural automatically equates to good and healthy, and promoters of food and supplements use that to our overall disadvantage.  Another glaring example of this came across the Internet a few weeks back.

A product called kraton is being aggressively promoted as a possible solution to the opioid epidemic. They say it is harmless and no more addictive than coffee. But there is “no reliable evidence that kratom can help addicts safely wean themselves off of heroin or prescription opioids, or that it offers any other therapeutic benefit, according to the FDA, which has issued a public health warning about its potential for addiction."

Various scientific studies show that it causes withdrawal symptoms similar to those of opioids, and it has been linked to episodes of psychosis, seizures, and to deaths, along with mild, moderate, and life-threatening medical outcomes reported in 660 phone calls to U.S. poison control centers from 2010 through 2015.“The CDC has issued four reports of Salmonella infection outbreaks linked to contaminated products.”

But here is how it’s promoted. It is marketed as a dietary supplement that grows naturally in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea with friendly sounding brand names like Botany Bay, Enhance Your Life and Divinity. They claim it helps overcome opioid addiction and withdrawal, lowers pain and blood pressure, prevents cancer and reduces nerve damage caused by strokes. (There is no evidence for any of these claims.)

Meanwhile Americans continue to buy it as the industry association fights government attempts to take it off the market. Again it’s a matter of valid science vs. perceptions, of critical thinking vs. feelings. It all comes down to that persistent misconception that natural stands for guaranteed goodness. (The Salmonella that contaminated some samples was also natural!)

The More Things Change...

The old saying is true: the more things change, the more they remain the same.  But today we must be far more careful than ever when facing old-fashioned threats.

This thought came from a new book I picked up at the library.  It's called Quackery:  A brief history of the worst ways to cure everything.  It contains several short sections, each covering one of the weird and often painful or disgusting medical practices of the past.

On page 47 in the radium section, I was stunned by the familiarity of ideas.  “Despite the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906, radium remained entirely unregulated because it was classified as a natural element.  (Many today still make the automatic assumption that a natural substance is always pure, useful and has no side effects.)  Because it was natural and unregulated guess what happened.  “Advertisements sprang up in newspapers touting the ability of this radioactive and sometimes deadly element as, for example, an aid to youth and beauty, health, and relief of aches and pains in joints and muscles.”

Radium is related to radon gas, and you can’t buy or sell a house without an inspection confirming safe levels, because it can cause lung cancer.  Radium in general is dangerous and anything but healthy, so this is an extreme example, but it did remind me of a couple of my comments posted at the beginning of this year about raw water, which can be dangerous, and hydrogenated water, which is expensive and backed by weak science.

 The following week I featured some of those miracle cures in newspapers that promise instant results and portray themselves as such a threat to Big Pharma that behind the scenes moves are supposedly afoot to banish them from the market.  (So you’d better act fast!)

And in December I wrote about the British National Health Service no longer paying for what they consider low value treatments including:  homeopathy and herbal medicines, fish oil, glucosamine and chondroitin combination products and lutein and antioxidant combination products.  The NHS reject these and some others as having low clinical effectiveness, with scant scientific backing while presenting significant safety concerns.

The next paragraph in the Quackery book tells how radium was so expensive that most of the so-called radioactive products “did not actually contain any radioactive ingredients at all.”  Instead of buying a dangerous product, they were buying a worthless product relying on placebo effect for its curative powers, a fact that doubtless saved lives but still emptied pocketbooks.  We see the same advertising schemes and mislabeling today.

These tactics of taking an unregulated substance and touting its supposed miraculous health benefits have been going on for years.  But the promotions today are even more insidious.  They go to the very edge of their legal boundaries, using scientific sounding words, enthusiastic endorsements and often trying to pass as news articles while burying required disclaimers at the end in small print.  The speed and breadth of communications in the modern world, as I explained last time, distributes misinformation quickly.  Particularly in the case of health issues, dangers are compounded by the fact that diseases and conditions may clear up on their own fooling users into attributing a cure to a worthless product.  That’s why listening to friends who swear by the effectiveness of this or that cure is so problematic.  Finally, as this Scientific American article on fake news points out, the more you hear an idea or opinion, the more familiar it becomes and the more you tend to believe it, even if you already know better.

Things stay the same, but in this modern age critical thinking, being skeptical and doing good research from reliable sources are much more urgently needed to protect your health and your wallet.

What is a Natural Baby Wipe?

Over the last six years I have written many times about how the terms natural and all-natural should not be taken seriously.  I labeled them and other such terms as trigger words, used by advertisers to get you buying without thinking.  Now the public is striking back.  Unfortunately, it is not doing so by stopping to think but by calling in the lawyers.

CBS Money Watch tells how Kimberly Clark has gotten into big trouble for labeling its baby wipes as natural when they contain a synthetic chemical called phenoxyethanol.  The company faces a lawsuit “seeking damages for unlawful business practices and acts and deceptive advertising.”  The mother on whose behalf the suit was filed says that had she known the “truth” about the baby wipes, she would have purchased a different product – presumably one with no artificial ingredients.

So what is the truth about phenoxyethanol?  Honest Company uses it as a preservative and to fight bacteria in five of its cleaning products.  Their website says, “Phenoxyethanol can be found naturally in green tea, but the commercial ingredient is synthetically produced in a laboratory creating what’s termed a ‘nature identical’ chemical.”  They go on to say that they have been getting questions from customers due to a concern raised by an on-going on-line controversy about the chemical’s safety.  But surprise!  Just like every other chemical in the world, including good old H₂O, too much can be bad.  They reassure their customers:  “Most of the studies that have found significant negative health impacts are based on full-strength or high-dose exposures. In real life usage, exposures are quite small. That’s why it’s approved at levels up to 1%.”

Likewise, according to the Honest Company and CBS, Whole Foods, an icon for natural products, uses it in its Premium Body Care products.  It is also listed in something called The Handbook of Green Chemicals. It may be found in a range of products including many cosmetics, soap, shaving cream, deodorant, ultrasound gel and toothpaste.

In this skin care dictionary of ingredients it’s listed as GOOD as a preservative.  “Phenoxyethanol is approved worldwide (including in Japan and in the EU) for use in all types of water-based cosmetics, up to a 1% concentration.”  Despite some negative comments elsewhere, this site declares it safe and effective, providing external references.

And another point from the FDA website: “FDA has not developed a definition for use of the term natural or its derivatives.”  This confirms that to date natural is primarily an advertising term, not a defined category.

What’s really at issue here is summed up later in the CBS article by Kimberly Clark’s response.  “This complaint does not allege a single safety event or evidence of any injury to a consumer.”  In other words, there are no damages to the baby.  The only problem may be a distressed mother, distressed because she thought that natural had a real legal meaning.  And that she, like so many other poorly informed shoppers, is “willing to pay and have paid, a premium for products advertised, marketed, and labeled as ‘natural’ over products containing nonnatural, synthetic ingredients.”  

Thinking about baby wipes in isolation - how natural is the idea pulling a moist towelette out of a plastic container you bought at Target?  All this doesn't seem to matter.

I have been known to make predictions before.  In this case, despite the wide use of the chemical, the lack of definition of natural and the industry standard that it is safe to use in appropriate amounts, here's what is likely.  KC will settle out of court, calculating it to be cheaper than fighting it out in court, faced with a sympathetic jury with no economic understanding, overwhelmed by the dispute between expert witnesses and in the presence of the poor distressed mother.  That’s just a hunch about the direction of today’s America where being a victim of social-media-induced panic or any other irrational behavior is so often rewarded.

Natural or Artificial?

My dictionary defines foodie as “a person keenly interested in food.”  I tend to redefine it as a person fussy about food primarily in the interest of impressing others.  If they were interested in food, they would do more research instead of trying to be cool or trendy about what they eat.  For example, see this Daily Beast article on how Nutella, which has been a common spread in Europe for years, “conquered America” with its niche, cult, unique and elite appeal.

This thought came to me as I was listening to the car radio, hearing an ad for some product with no artificial ingredients.  I wondered whether there was a standard definition of what no artificial ingredients means.  I already know the FDA has no formal definition for natural or all natural.  When you see these words on a package, it means pretty much whatever the manufacturer wants it to mean (unless the claim is so outrageous that they get in trouble for false advertising).

The best I could come up with was an FDA definition for natural flavor, that is, derived from a "spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof.”  So a flavoring from any other source must be considered artificial.  But does artificial automatically mean bad, as some (fussy) folks believe?

This interesting article points out: “On a scientific level, an artificially-made flavor compound is absolutely indistinguishable from the same compound derived from a natural source.”  This is similar to the understanding that natural fertilizer, think cow-manure, must break down into the same chemical compounds that are present in processed fertilizer before plants can absorb them.  To the plants it’s all nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium, along with a short list of micronutrients.  The source of these nutrients doesn’t matter.  (Plants are not fussy.)

The same article goes on to give a fairly disgusting example of “castoreum, a secretion that comes from the two castor sacs located under a beaver's tail, right next to a pair of anal glands.”  It comes from an animal, so it is considered a natural flavor and it “tastes and smells like vanilla.”  If added to your ice cream, it would be considered natural, not artificial.

Speaking of ice cream, and changing the subject as quickly as possible from beaver butts, many people also believe that frozen yogurt is the better choice.  On the contrary, as this CNN story clearly explains:  “Frozen yogurt only sounds healthier than ice cream.”  It has more sugar than ice cream to cover the tartness, and ice cream has more fat.  The benefit of fat is that it slows the absorption of sugar, which may delay the craving for more.  The biggest disadvantage of frozen yogurt is that people eating any food that they believe is healthier for them tend to eat more of it. 

So to be a good foodie, as the dictionary defines it, one must do the research rather than follow the trends or try to be a trendsetter introducing your closest friends to the latest up-and-coming fad food.  It takes a bit of research and understanding of science, some critical thinking to get the facts; and it takes some perspective to shun the hype.  (Is that why I saw "All Natural" beef jerky in the checkout aisle recently?)

On the other hand, you could go about as normal, shopping at the upscale groceries and spending more for foods with only marginal, if any, added benefits.  Then after the meal, why not relax with the ultimate of after dinner pleasures.  It’s all-natural, made only from plants, gluten-free, with no additives or preservatives and no saturated fats, sugars, sodium or cholesterol.  Yes, light up a cigar!  (I wonder if they make organic cigars.)