The Organic Food Movement: A Brilliant Marketing Strategy

I think that labeling food "organic" is one of the worst thing that could have happened to our food supply. I mean, on one level, all food should be organic. Secondly, by definition, there are things that could be termed "organic" that you really wouldn't want to eat. For example, deadly nightshade is pretty organic, I mean, so long as it hasn't been grown with pesticides, right?

I was disappointed to see that the organic heavy cream we buy isn't just cream any more. Yeah, before, there was one ingredient. Cream. Like it should be. Now there are three, Organic Grade A Cream (Milk), Sodium Citrate, Carrageenan. Carrageenan is used to thicken foods. Basically without it, the cream in this container wouldn't have the consistency of cream, because there's not enough cream in it to qualify as being heavy cream. It saves the manufacturer money. And you get not cream, but cream with some other crap thrown in. This is brilliant, from a marketing standpoint.





Sodium Citrate is probably used in this instance as a preservative. As if real cream needs a preservative! Pure cream shouldn't really need a preservative, if it's kept sealed and refrigerated. At the dairy where we get our raw milk, the dairy farmer told us that if we leave the cream on the milk would last maybe three weeks, whereas if we take the cream off, the skim milk left behind will go rancid in a few days. So what does Sodium Citrate being in the ingredient list tell us? It tells us the same thing as having the Carrageenan in it. There's not a lot of real cream in the container.

We're going to quit wasting money on this "organic" crap and get some real heavy cream from a local dairy. The amusing thing is, it's pretty much the same price as the product above.

The whole "organic" food movement is merely a money-maker and Big Agra is getting in on the game. It doesn't urge people to buy locally. They buy things labeled "organic" and think, firstly that the item is good for their health, based on the organic label alone, and secondly that they're doing something good for the environment. On the first part, if you're buying organic french fries, or organic waffles, those are no better for your body than non-organic ones. As for the environment, that's more codswallop. A truck had to bring your groceries probably at least half way across the country, and maybe an airplane had to bring it to the country in the first place. Do you know how much diesel a single truck uses in a day? I do, because I used to drive a tractor trailer. I would typically go through 100 gallons of diesel a day, driving for about 600 miles. That's a single truck.

Consider this article from Business Week:

Next time you're in the supermarket, stop and take a look at Stonyfield Farm yogurt. With its contented cow and green fields, the yellow container evokes a bucolic existence, telegraphing what we've come to expect from organic food: pure, pesticide-free, locally produced ingredients grown on a small family farm.

So it may come as a surprise that Stonyfield's organic farm is long gone. Its main facility is a state-of-the-art industrial plant just off the airport strip in Londonderry, N.H., where it handles milk from other farms. And consider this: Sometime soon a portion of the milk used to make that organic yogurt may be taken from a chemical-free cow in New Zealand, powdered, and then shipped to the U.S. True, Stonyfield still cleaves to its organic heritage. For Chairman and CEO Gary Hirshberg, though, shipping milk powder 9,000 miles across the planet is the price you pay to conquer the supermarket dairy aisle. "It would be great to get all of our food within a 10-mile radius of our house," he says. "But once you're in organic, you have to source globally."

So next time you pick up your "organic" crap at the store, ask yourself how far away it came from, and whether you could get the same thing closer to home, whether it's labeled "organic" or not. Organic certification doesn't mean jack, especially with Big Agra writing all the rules, and local farmers, although their food may be technically organic because they don't use pesticides, may not have the resources, the time, or the interest in getting certification. Buy locally, and ask the farmer how he operates.

The Love (and HFCS) is in the Soup

It's a heartwarming story about a major corporation fighting to end hunger and obesity. The Campbell Soup company is planning an initiative to reduce malnutrition in the town of it's headquarters, Camden, NJ.

It's a great PR story to be sure, no less at the expense of our press advertising it. But if they choose to follow the dietary guidelines spouted by every other nutrition "expert" they won't get very far. And judging by what they put in their products, I'm sure they'll heed the " experts' " opinion.

"Campbell officials have been particularly struck by problems that revolve around food. The company, long a purveyor of vegetables in its soups and V-8 juices, has made efforts to become — and bill itself as — a prime maker of healthy options. It has reduced sodium in many of its soups and other products and introduced whole-grain Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers, among other health-oriented developments."

What's ironic about this, is that some of the Campbell Soups are some of the unhealthiest things you could eat. Well, maybe white bread with High Fructose Corn Syrup laden jelly would be worse, but maybe not by much. Their tomato soup has HFCS as the second ingredient and most of their other soups have canola oil or partially hydrogenated cottonseed or soybean oil and MSG. Even their "upscale" looking soups have HFCS.

So maybe while they're on their anti-hunger, anti-obesity kick, they could maybe stop putting crap in their soup? Again, that's another one of those things that I'm not holding my breath over.

About the only way to get soup that comes already prepared without a bunch of junk in it is to pony up $4 for a can or box of organic. Poor people can't afford this. But why are some groceries so cheap in the first place? Because they put cheap, crappy ingredients in it. Truly you can make your own soup at home, easily, and you'll know what's in it. It will have ingredients that you can pronounce. I always hate it when I read an ingredient and first of all can't pronounce it, and secondly don't even know what on this green earth it comes from. Does it come from an animal? A plant? Industrial waste? Who knows?

Would you like to know how to make tomato soup? It is so easy, it makes me wonder why anyone would buy it in a can. You boil chopped tomatoes in chicken broth with a bit of salt, until they're very tender. You can even walk away while this is happening. When they're through, you pour them into a food processor and blend them up. It takes a minute of blending. Pour the mixture back into the pot, straining the seeds with a strainer, and add a bit of heavy cream and a packet or two of stevia or splenda and stir until warm. It is very, very good, and very, very easy.

How about carrot soup? I haven't made this in ages, but it's even easier than the tomato soup. You boil chopped carrots in chicken broth until soft. You then use a hand blender to blend them up, in the pot. Voilà! You have carrot soup. You can do this with just about any vegetable. And the stew-like soups, like our chicken soup are even easier in that there's no blending involved.

I see people all the time buying pre-packaged food, and think to myself that they've probably forgotten what real food tastes like. I'm sure that the five year old kid who weighs 125 lbs mentioned in the story, eats primarily processed carbohydrates.

"Kim Fremont Fortunato, who was hired late last year to head up the anti-obesity efforts, said she recently shadowed a doctor who was treating a 5-year-old Camden boy weighing 125 pounds. She said the doctor warned the boy's grandmother that he would be diabetic by age 10 if his obesity wasn't controlled."

I'd like to believe that the doctor treating him will tell his caregivers to lay off the carbohydrates, but that's probably wishful thinking. I'm sure they'll tell them to cut out the fat and the sodium and give the kid whole wheat bread.