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> Companies have spent years cutting costs by replacing natural ingredients with artificial ones, while overselling the message that the products still taste gr

by dubfan 12y ago

> Companies have spent years cutting costs by replacing natural ingredients with artificial ones, while overselling the message that the products still taste great and are good for you, Dibadj said. Now that consumers are calling them on it, a reversal to natural ingredients is sure to hurt profit. That seems to be the point of this natural food movement. Rally the troops of uninformed but passionate rubes who think artificial == bad and natural == good to pressure companies into substituting out ingredients for more expensive ones, hurting their profit margin. This might have the effect of making these products cost more, which further strengthens the anti-corporate ideology this movement ultimately stems from. All the while they make a nice living off of book sales and newsletter subscriptions. The industry of fear is certainly booming in this social media era.

x0x0 12y ago
The point of the natural food movement -- as is patently obvious -- is suspicion about the health effects of many chemicals put into foods; suspicion of the health effects of the way food animals are drugged, raised, and treated; and suspicion of regulatory capture of the FDA. We should treat, in the absence of safety studies, artificial ingredients as dangerous and prefer not to use them. Just for example, people don't want bpa or similar substitutes in their food. And while it appears that bpa may be safe-ish [2], we got around to checking that well after manufacturers put it in all of us. The CDC had found bisphenol A in the urine of 95% of adults sampled in 1988–1994 and in 93% of children and adults tested in 2003–04. While the EPA considers exposures up to 50 µg/kg/day to be safe, the most sensitive animal studies show effects at much lower doses, and several studies of children, who tend to have the highest levels, have found levels over the EPA's suggested safe limit figure. [2] [1] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bpa-free-plastic-containers-may-be-just-as-hazardous/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bpa-free-plastic-c... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A
pbreit 12y ago
I have a hard time criticizing people who encourage the eating of natural foods.

by dubfan 12y ago

x0x0 12y ago

The point of the natural food movement -- as is patently obvious -- is suspicion about the health effects of many chemicals put into foods; suspicion of the health effects of the way food animals are drugged, raised, and treated; and suspicion of regulatory capture of the FDA. We should treat, in the absence of safety studies, artificial ingredients as dangerous and prefer not to use them. Just for example, people don't want bpa or similar substitutes in their food. And while it appears that bpa may be safe-ish [2], we got around to checking that well after manufacturers put it in all of us. The CDC had found bisphenol A in the urine of 95% of adults sampled in 1988–1994 and in 93% of children and adults tested in 2003–04. While the EPA considers exposures up to 50 µg/kg/day to be safe, the most sensitive animal studies show effects at much lower doses, and several studies of children, who tend to have the highest levels, have found levels over the EPA's suggested safe limit figure. [2] [1] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bpa-free-plastic-containers-may-be-just-as-hazardous/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bpa-free-plastic-c... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A

pbreit 12y ago

I have a hard time criticizing people who encourage the eating of natural foods.