> In the mid-late 70s labels on foods and cleaning products told you exactly what was in them. This is not true, and for some reason this seems to be a common

> In the mid-late 70s labels on foods and cleaning products told you exactly what was in them. This is not true, and for some reason this seems to be a common urban myth. The distinction between natural and artificial flavors goes back to 1906, and in 1938 there was a stronger law requiring the disclosure of artificial flavoring, color, or preservatives. I don't know if you're referring to the 1958 Food Additives and Amendment Act, but that didn't really affect ingredient listings either -- it was about food safety, not disclosure. But there was nothing substantially different about ingredient listings between the 1970s and today. I honestly don't know where you got this information, or what kind of ingredients you were under the impression that your father was able to analyze. The 1960s and 1970s was definitely the era when awareness around these things began to grow among consumers, so it definitely helps explain your father's attention to these things. But the idea that disclosure requirements have been watered down, or that this is due to corporate lobbying, is something like an urban legend. There are certainly issues around trade regulation and naming, like which species of fish are or are not allowed to be labeled as catfish, similar to how champagne can only come from a particular region of France. So there is definitely massive lobbying around geographical disclosures and naming. But the idea that there has been some kind of massive shift of disclosure in terms of chemicals is just not true. If you look up the ingredients on actual historical processed snack labels from the 1970s, they're not any different from today.