GMO Shmo - Natural cereal isn't so natural...

Shug on 23/8/2012 at 11:31

Slightly disagree with demagogue here, because people really SHOULD be afraid of the produce that gets shipped out of China. There may be little difference between American and Chinese practices though, I'm not sure

faetal on 23/8/2012 at 11:38

You should probably try to justify that a little, else it is just going to appear xenophobic.

demagogue on 23/8/2012 at 11:42

Yes people should be afraid of things like lead in toys, and China has a bad reputation for things like that. But if China brought a WTO case against the US for restricting them, the US would have to show some study somewhere verifying it or they'd win the case and it'd cost the US a lot. I mean you probably want border controls for lead coming from anywhere... Heaven forbid some Swedish company had a lapse and something got through because customs didn't have them on their radar.

heywood on 23/8/2012 at 11:54

Quote Posted by Briareos H

What's the point of arguing semantics anyway. They're taking advantage on purpose of the general stupidity / ignorance of people to make more money. The only effective difference with lying is that it's not admissible in court.

It's not semantics. It's about recognizing the difference between meaningless advertising buzzwords (all natural) and terms with a defined meaning whose usage is regulated (organic). Advertising is all about selling people on an image, linking the product to a persons' values or desires, taking advantage of what they they presume or wish to be true. When Tony the Tiger says Frosties will bring out the tiger in you, you don't literally think that eating the cereal will bring out tiger like qualities in people. Saying the cereal is wholesome or natural is no different except you're trying to appeal to people who desire a different image. As a consumer, if you're looking for specific qualities in the products you buy, you need to know how to identify those qualities. You can't just assume it's going to have the qualities you want just because the packaging has favorable images, slogans, or ad words.

Another example: "good source of fiber". I see this on practically half of all cereal boxes now. All it really means is that there is some fiber in the product. How much? Who knows, check the nutrition information on the side of the box if you actually care about fiber.

PeeperStorm on 24/8/2012 at 08:14

Until I read the ingredient list and FDA nutrition guide on the packages, I just assume that all the text translates to "Made from salt, sugar, lard, and chicken assholes." Even if it's just bottled water.

scumble on 24/8/2012 at 14:50

My little input would be that the only way to ensure you have "natural" food products is to grow them yourself or actually know the entire supply chain for a product.

In most cases I would say buyers of "natural" produce are after a bit of an easy feelgood factor. I've seen the phrase "all natural" on products in the US enough times to be somewhat suspicious of it, particularly when you find the ubiquitous high fructose corn syrup hiding in the list of ingredients.

In fact it's possible to have "organic" HFCS, but it doesn't make it any better as a food sweetener or any more "natural".

LarryG on 24/8/2012 at 19:45

Or less natural. (Unnatural?) What do we really mean when we use the word "natural" in the context of human or pet food?

The problem is that most everything is found in nature at the atomic level. There are very few substances which are unnatural at their core. Some transuranic elements with really short half lives, I think, and that's it. So we can't mean unnatural elements, maybe we mean molecules which are not formed in nature (i.e. without human help). Is that what we mean? While that would exclude plastics, it would also exclude most modern food products. Our beans, our corn, our livestock, all are the result of centuries of human interference via selective breeding to change their nature for our benefit and also the result of human interference in natural growing patterns through modern farming practices. Irrigation and feedlots should be a big no-no if you want truly natural foodstuffs. And then there is cooking! Clearly that changes the food at the molecular level into something unnatural like a hamburger and chocolate malted. I've never seen those in nature! So should we only eat uncooked food we can gather in the "wild" (whatever that is)? Forget whether that is practical, would it be healthier than the modern mass produced foods? Back when people did just that, populations were much lower and people didn't live long enough to get the modern diseases of aging. I suspect that such a diet is not healthier in total.

The problem is that when you get right down to it, what we want is for "natural" to mean "good, healthy, and at the least does no harm for us to eat" but surprisingly no one is stepping up and making that claim for their food products. Instead, they imply that with the meaningless word "natural" and hope that we don't notice.

froghawk on 24/8/2012 at 20:41

Quote Posted by faetal

Everything Demagogue said.

It's like the "natural" remedies business, which tries to draw an artificial line between "natural remedies" (read: herbs purported to contain a therapeutic compound, but delivered in non-controlled amounts due to natural variation, plus also containing other useless or potentially harmful compounds) vs. "synthetic" medicines (read: purified molecules which exert a therapeutic effect).

The public has an emotionally biased knee-jerk response to what is deemed "natural" or "synthetic" but really, all that matters is how it affects the body, since the primary purpose of digestion is to reduce complex foods down to the base constituents in order to metabolically process them.

Your take on 'natural' vs. 'synthetic' remedies is not entirely accurate. Yes, the 'synthetic' forms contain extracted and purified molecules which are always dosed, but a number of potentially harmful compounds such as colors and preservatives are ALWAYS added to commercial medications. Parabens, for instance.

Take a look at Marinol. Cannabis is illegal - but add some colors, preservatives and filler to it, and you get a marketable prescription drug.

Yakoob on 24/8/2012 at 22:24

Quote Posted by demagogue

This is also different from marketers exploiting consumers into buying unhealthy food.

And THIS is kind of what I wanted to focus in this thread, not so much "natural vs. unnutural" debate (which I do agree people kneejerk over react to). What I am annoyed is just how clearly predatory this thing is - one of the cereals in the report even changed the box to nice green, put pictures of leaves and all claims of "natural" and "going back to nature" while using all synthetic and GMOed plants. I have nothing against using them, but christfuck, you shouldn't be allowed to advertise your product as the polar opposite of what it is and charge me extra for it.

Quote Posted by heywood

I'd call that preying on people's ignorance, not lying. You simply assumed the word "natural" on the box meant something it didn't. Lesson learned.

Stop for a second and think what you just said - preying on people's ignorance is totally OK! Is this really what you espouse, or what you're merely used to? I really don't think I should have to spend 2 hours studying linguistics or get a PhD in biotechnology just to figure what's in my goddamn box of cereal.

Quote:

Another example: "good source of fiber". I see this on practically half of all cereal boxes now. All it really means is that there is some fiber in the product. How much? Who knows, check the nutrition information on the side of the box if you actually care about fiber.

But I can't check the side of the box to see what pesticides the plants were sprayed with or what genetic modification was put into corn. I am not arguing the whole manufacturing process should be outlined on the product, but at least, that claims clearly designed to misinformed aren't used.

Your argument is "well marketing is all about bending the truth and taking advantage of the consumer." Yes. That's what it is today. But it shouldn't be. Marketing should be communicating to the consumer what the product IS, not what it pretends to be in order to milk the uninformed. And it's the whole point of organizations like FDA (or even the government) to ensure that happens.

Sure, let companies sell cyanide pills if people are retarded enough to buy them, but make sure that is communicated clearly. (Uber-Hyperbole follows: ) Not some BS claim like "well, the cynamide is only 0.49 which rounds down to 0 so technically we can put a claim like "contains NO cyanide* (on a 0-1 integer scale)" on our box a-ha!" or some equivalent marketing techniques.

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As a side note, And I know Organic HAS a set definition, but again, that doesn't mean it's necessarily properly enforced. Secondly, organics allow certain chemicals/pesticides/processes and ban others - but with so much contradictory research and big corps funding, can we be really sure that one chemical is better than the other? I'm not saying "never buy veggies omg tinfoil," but rather, with all the misinformation and malpractice in food industry, merely "organic certified" doesn't inspire much confidence in me (and part of the reason I never bought into the hype).

I really didn't mean to go into "natural" vs. "synthetic" debate, and I do agree just because something is "unnatural" doesn't instantly mean "bad" (AC is unnatural and I effin love it). Likewise, I avoid the low-fat/low-carb/light/etc. fads since it usually just means swapping one "unhealthy" ingredient for another, with the latter arguable even worse for you. I remember there being an interesting study on mice fed coke and diet coke showing the two showed no difference in health/weight - even though the diet mice weren't getting sugar, their body thought it was getting sugar (due to the artificial sweetener) and so ended up reacting the same way, heh.

LarryG on 24/8/2012 at 22:34

Quote Posted by heywood

Another example: "good source of fiber". I see this on practically half of all cereal boxes now.

Actually, most cereal boxes are nearly 100% fiber , unlike their contents (pre-consumer, post-consumer and other recovered wood fibers, but fiber none the less). I think the cereal manufactures are missing the boat by not counting the fiber in the boxes when printing the fiber claims on the sides of those same boxes. Perhaps a recycling campaign that encourages the eating of cereal boxes and throwing away the cereal (instead of the other way around) is called for. It might even be more nutritious. It surely would have us eating less fats and sugars!