Did You Know?

[wowzer]

Seventh Generation Non-Toxic Times. We thought we

[debmidge]

Now that you mention it, last week I heard on Radio that Philip Morris will be selling the "Kraft" product line off.

[blueeyedmanda]

Philip Morris as in the cigarette company?? I never knew that, interesting. Disturbing...but interesting.

[jerseyangel]

That was interesting. Thanks for taking the time to post it

[gfp]

Philip Morris as in the cigarette company?? I never knew that, interesting. Disturbing...but interesting.

That part I find less disturbing..

The part to worry about is when gaint corps are just making a brandname that caters for a "health segment" of the market.

In-most cases this is simply a marketing ploy, a while back I posted the published minutes from a food industry meeting where several multinationals identified a need for food that is perceived as healthy.. and I highlight that word specifically.

In no case I can think of does a multinational actually care about your health so long as you are well enough to get out of the house and buy thier products off the shelf. They only case about your custom...

The real worry is that these companies are only interested in what is perceived as healthy and catering to fads.

If gluten-free is trendy they will market to it but if that means filling out their product with other alergens then I doubt they think that will influence sales overtly.

In many cases the mutlinationals have lots of spare byproducts to use... often byproducts which are taken out of heaviliy processed foods (or in this case cigarettes).... and whenever they can they will use these byproducts as a product line.

Thus if you produce lots of white bread, process lots of rice to white rice then you have lots of fibre left over to use. A healthfood subsidiary is ideal to get rid of these waste products.... (in the case of Philip Morris this is nicotine gum and similar which in some studies (not the ones paid for by Phillip Morris) is proven to have a higher failure rate than cold turkey)

The same goes equally for food if less transparently...

Soy is in public opinion associated with healthy eating... along with whole grain breads etc. anything based on seaweed or other nice buizzwords....

In general when you read the labels on some so called "health products" it sounds like a list of byproducts... chosen because they sound healthy or even just renaming neutral products like "aqua" instead of just saying water...

One thing disturbs me is that although I'm not anti-soy in general I don't want it making up a significant part of my diet, it seems OK for me but many celiacs including my mother do react badly to it and IMHO eating significant amounts of it is the best way to develop a future intolerence.

But there is no need for everyone to wear tin hats... I think its pretty easy to read the labels and decide... if it contains things you don't know what they are or shouldn't be in the product to start with the chance is they are not going to be good, regardless of the big label saying "Healthy options/alternatives/etc.)

A good example is gluten-free pasta... my usualyl fav is "corn, water" .or vermicelli type "Rice, water" .. if the list gets any longer chance is whatever is added isn't good!

[tummytroubles]

Thanks for all of the information. Its pretty scary! I'm definitely going to be more careful when selecting prepackaged food labeled "healthy".