Because They CAN PART II

Last week I wrote a blog entry entitles "Because They Can" and got a response back from my reader in the Ukraine.  And it got me to thinking more and more about this concept that I proposed of commonality making for immunity.  What that means is that large food manufacturers here in the US have the advantage of being able to use any of the 3,000 additives that are approved for use in food by the FDA.  Of those, 700 are known to be toxic, Class 2 Carcinogens or above, cause multiple organ degeneration, sterility and that retard mental development.  My Ukrainian reader asked my why do US processors use these things if they are in fact toxic.  My answer restated the title, because they can.

It is a competitive world out in the food industry.  All the big players are desperately trying to make their products in the cheapest way possible to squeeze every penny of profit from the sale of their goods.  Let's face it, there really aren't any NEW foods or NEW concepts out there.  Pretty much everything has been done before, well, except for my stuff, I had some unique concepts that no one else ever tried before.  But big businesses aren't risk takers, they won't spend a few million making goat cheese ravioli with salted carameled piloncillo chipotle sauce and try to market it.  Not unless some other company made it and made money doing so.  So that leaves the big guys in a tough spot, with two options.  One is to make their marketing more conducive to the consumer to want their particular product over the competition; and two, make their product in as cheap a way as possible to maximize profit.  Well I guess there is a third, and that is to employ the first two together.

 Ennnhh, okay, there is a fourth as well.  And that one is to include ingredients that are addictive, and therefore make return customers a foregone conclusion.  Ask any heroin or cocaine dealer how that works for them, they will tell you just how successful a business model it is.  What ingredients are addictive?  Sugars, artificial sweeteners, caffeine and HFCS.  Take a trip down the breakfast cereal aisle of your local megamart.  Look at each of the nationally advertised brands.  Virtually each and every one of them contains sugar as the second ingredient.  Even the ones advertised as "More Whole Grain Goodness than Any Other Brand".  And the ones that have honey right in the name, such as Honey Bunches of Oats, has as the second ingredient, sugar, the third, Corn Syrup, and then down the list at about tenth, honey.  Look at Special K cereal, this is a product that promotes weight loss by integrating this into part of your diet plan.  The second ingredient, sugar.  I do have to applaud General Mills for starting to use Vitamin E as a preservative instead of BHA or BHT which both have shown to have extremely detrimental side effects if consumed long term.  Which if you get addicted to any cereal, you usually eat it all the time for most of your life. 

Most of the cereals out there do have sugar, or HFCS as an ingredient.  As well as, canola oil.  Honey is expensive, sugar and HFCS are cheap.  There again, cheaper ingredients.  HFCS, known toxicity.  The big B's for preservatives, known organ damage.  Canola oil over more expensive oils, canola causes organ degradation.  Why use them if they slowly kill the people that purchase your products?  Well, because the FDA says that they can.  And since every single manufacturer of breakfast cereal, as well as just about every bread baker, and every manufacturer of cake mixes, instant potato products, soups, soup mixes, pasta sauces, frozen anything, processed anything, all use lots and lots of the 700 additives allowed to them that are known to be harmful.  Then it does indeed become increasingly difficult to sue any ONE company for causing your particular health problems.  How can you pinpoint the blame to an individual company or any individual specific additive?  You can't.  It would be impossible for any person to do that.  The use of toxins in our food is UNBELIEVABLY common.  So, in the commonality, there is immunity. 

I have read these three books and highly recommend them to you.  Rich Food Poor Food is a shopping guide, and an in depth evaluation of a lot of the additives in our food supply.  It goes into great detail about how to avoid the bad, and buy the good.  It Starts with Food is an excellent book about, well, food.  The processing and poisoning of our food is there, and it is scary indeed.  The third is just a fun book that blasts through any preconceived ideas about world economics.  And it is a great read.  Try them.  Hey, I make a couple bucks off each one if you buy them and it helps me stay on track.