Food Conspiracies

This past weekend, I was a guest on a radio show that is broadcast through a network to about 100 stations across the US.  I was talking about my book, The Food Police.  Having done dozens of these kinds of shows over the past six or seven months since the book release, I figured that I've heard just about every question there was to ask.  I was wrong.  

After some standard back-and-forth questions with the host, the line was opened to callers.  Here are a few of the claims I heard - each from a different caller: 

• Adding fluoride to water doesn't prevent cavities and causes joint pain, teeth browning, cancer, and Alzheimers   
• Canola oil is an "unnatural" newly created synthetic product that causes cardiac problems and high blood pressure
• Organic farmers are small farmers; small farmers treat their soil better than large farmers
• With GMOs the genes they inject into DNA.  They are unnatural and become free floating in the soil; 70% of babies have the Bt toxin in their blood as a result of GMOs; the implication is that GMOs are very dangerous
• A new wave of cancer patients are successful fighting cancer by moving to a diet of organic produce 

Some of these are more grounded in reality than others but overall I think I lost a little bit of faith in my fellow man.  I don't mean that in a belittling way.  But it makes me wonder what it is in human nature or what incentives exist in media/internet that would take a little grain of truth and turn it into some of these beliefs that are so at odds with the evidence.  

All Natural Law Suits

Back in May, I wrote the following:  

there is a large contingent of lawyers with eyes set on the food industry   Some were involved in the Tobacco lawsuits and are looking for a new target.   Others are food lawyers and public health advocates using the legal system to invoke the change they want.  In other cases, food company A is suing food company B in an attempt to limit competition.  Whatever the reasons, one lawyer told me something to the effect that: if you've got the word "natural" on your food product, there is good chance you're going to get sued.

It seems the Wall Street Journal is now on the story.  They ran a piece yesterday on natural food labels.  They write:

Meanwhile, lawsuits are piling up, alleging false advertising. Attorneys say at least 100 lawsuits have been filed in the past two years challenging the natural claims of UnileverULVR.LN +0.32% PLC's Ben & Jerry's, Kellogg Co. K +0.41%  's Kashi, Beam Inc. BEAM +2.39% 's Skinnygirl alcohol drinks and dozens of other brands. Some lawsuits have been thrown out, but others have ended with multi-million-dollar settlements. Still others are pending. For the most part, the suits are filed by plaintiffs' lawyers on behalf of consumers who purchased the products, seeking class-action status.

The problem is, as the WSJ notes, that:

The Food and Drug Administration has no definition, says a spokeswoman, but rather a long-standing policy that it considers "natural'' to mean that "nothing artificial or synthetic (including all color additives regardless of source) has been included in, or has been added to, a food that would not normally be expected to be in the food.'' The agency's website says it is "difficult to define a food product that is 'natural' because the food has probably been processed and is no longer the product of the earth."

No only does the FDA not have a definition, another deeper problem is that consumers don't know what they think natural means.  As I pointed out in a survey in June, 66% of consumers think foods with added salt are natural, but only 32% think foods with added sodium chloride are natural.

Stone-age agricultural industrialists

Claims about early agricultural practices and how much grain our ancestors ate are apparently full of… manure.

As early as 8,000 years ago, Stone Age farmers across Europe were working their crop lands intensely, irrigating and strategically applying manure, according to new research published in today’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The findings also call into question previous estimates of how much protein in the Neolithic human diet was derived from animals rather than plants.

There is more at the post by Gemma Tarlach at Discovermagazine.com

What is Natural Food Anyway?

At little over a month ago, I discussed some of the ongoing legal challenges that are swirling around "natural" claims on foods.  One of the big challenges is that the word "natural" is nebulous and is vaguely defined by regulators.   

I thought I'd try to shed a little light on the subject by making use of the survey project I just started and asking consumers what they think the word means.  In June, I added two questions to the survey.  The first question listed 10 statements and individuals had to place them in a box that said "I believe foods containing this ingredient are natural" or one that said "I DO NOT believe foods containing this ingredient are natural."  The order of items was randomized across respondents (sample size is 1,004, demographically weighted to match the US population, sampling error is about +/- 3%).  

The results indicate that most people think added cane sugar, salt, at beet sugar are "natural" but HFCS, sodium chloride, and biotechnology are not.  Interestingly, salt and Sodium Chloride are the same thing!  Yet, using the technical/scientific name reduces the % perceiving salt as natural from 65.6% to 32%!

Processed foods are seen as least natural.  "Processed food" is also a vague term.  Is cheese a processed food?   

The second question I asked was the following, "Which of the following best fits your definition of 'natural food'?"  I gave four options, and here is the % of respondents choosing each option.

The majority of respondents thought that the best definition (at least among the four I included) was, "fresh foods with no added ingredients and no processing."  

I suspect many of the foods sitting on a grocery store shelf that use the word "natural" do not meet this definition consumers found most descriptive.