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lying food labels
Obviously we all know that 90% of the claims that food labels make are false... but its really amazing how unregulated these claims are. The FDA tries, but there are just too many runarounds. I found this was particularly appaling though:
Free range eggs
Ah, the idyllic red barn. The rays of sunshine streaming over the hillside. You feel good buying those "free range" eggs knowing that the chickens tasked with producing those little protein-filled shells lived happy cage-free lives. The sunny label says so.
But the few extra cents you plunk down for the "free range" eggs might be paying a savvy marketer, rather than an ethical farmer, because the government doesn't regulate the use of the phrase "free range" or "cage free" on eggs.
Legally speaking, it's meaningless, according to Consumer Reports' Eco Label Decoder.
The Department of Agriculture does have rules for use of the term on poultry. It means chickens must be granted the luxury of exactly five minutes of "access" to the outdoors everyday, a token prize for a short dirty life that can also include an unceremonious severing of the beak, wing-to-wing crowding in a shed that's more hangar than coop, and more chicken poop than you ever want to contemplate while planning a meal.
Those eggs you buy may have been raised ethically, with room enough for hens to roam the yard and peck contentedly at the dirt. But there's no guarantee in the "free range" label.
From this article:
http://green.yahoo.com/blog/daily_green_news/280/nine-food-label-lies.html
Maybe I don't have a heightened sense of smell, but I've never smelled any vagina on my pants. -- TSD
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Re: lying food labels
People just want to support something they believe it (ethical treatment of animals) and sh!t like this gets in the way. :-(
My work has a farm and they sell the eggs to the staff. It's all organic/free range/no hormones/etc. Unfortately the eggs are brown and K refuses to eat brown eggs because they creep her out
sahm ~ toddler breastfeeder ~ cloth diaperer ~ baby wearer
S too! We have them sometimes and I just hope she doesn't notice, LOL!
It's really sad that things are not better regulated. It shouldn't be so hard to feed your family healthy, safe and ethically produced/grown food :-(
Great article. DW and I watched the documentary Food, Inc. over the holidays and it really opened my eyes to how little the Department of Agriculture does to keep us safe and informed.
DW and I are really far from the "crunchy, granola" type, but I've actually been looking into joining a CSA and food co-op after watching Food, Inc. Mainstream food manufacturers scare me.
I remember I went to college with a girl who cried because they didn't sell white eggs at the grocery store near the college - all of the local suppliers just had brown ones. She refused to believe that they taste exactly the same, and refused to try them. For my part I had never even seen a brown egg before I went to college, and now I always buy them when I can - I just think they are so pretty and seem so much more like, well, eggs!
I had no idea about the cage-free rules. Thank you for posting this. I will keep a better eye on what eggs I am buying, knowing this.